Court Opinion

ID: 9808395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:37:11.792584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:06.966522
License: Public Domain

Clark, O. I.,
concurring. The Court that decided IIolee v. Henderson did not deem themselves infallible, for they overruled divers of their own opinions as erroneous, and succeeding Cburts have overruled other opinions of that Court. There is no peculiar sacredness attached to Hoke v. Henderson. No other court whatever, anywhere or at any time, has followed it as authority. All have concurred in disregarding it and not a few have sharply criticised it, a few' of which criticisms have been collected, 127 N. C., at pp. 252, 253. If Mr. Reverdy Johnson paid the decision the scant compliment of mentioning it in his argument in Ex parte Garland, *1634 Wallace, 333, the opinion of the Oourt did not treat it with as much consideration. It is not even referred to therein.
Nor has the case always been followed even by this Oourt. It owes its prominence not to the original decision in 1833, which was not followed for near forty years, but to its revival and wider application after the political changes in 1810 and 1898. Its fundamental doctrine that office is not an agency but property obtained by contract and therefore protected by the contract clause of the Federal Constitution', was most effectually denied by every judge when he took his seat on the Supreme or the Superior Oourt bench in 1868, since he did so in disregard of that holding. The Convention of 1868 could no more abrogate a contract (if office was a contract) than it could any other contract made in 1865-’68. The Court has often ignored it, notably in Mills v. Williams, 33 N. C., 558; Bunting v. Gales, 17 N. C., 283, and Winslow v. Morton, 118 N. C., 486, and there are other cases in which it has been only partially upheld. Having discussed these cases in numerous dissenting opinions from Prison v. Day, 124 N. C., 362, down to Taylor v. Vann, 127 N. C., at pp. 240-253, in which last many of the opinions sustaining the legislative power over offices created by legislation are collected, it is not necessary that I should cite them again.
As the essence of the decision in Hoke v. Henderson is that office is property based on contract and hence protected by the United States Constitution (for there is no such clause in the State Constitution), the General Assembly could not, if that view was correct, make any rule nor pass any law to disregard it. If they could, then all future contracts of any kind whatsoever could be taken out of the protection of the Federal Constitution by a simple statute that all future contracts shall not have that protection. S'o far from the Legislature acquiescing, every case, from Hoke v. Henderson itself down to Mial v. *164Ellington., the present case, was necessarily presented by legislative action taken in disregard of Hoke v. Henderson. As long as the Court held to the doctrine of that case, the Legislature could make no- rule to the contrary, beyond persistently disregarding it as it has often done, as evidenced by numerous decisions. There is no way to get rid of the- decision except by the Court which made it repudiating it, for the reasons given in the very able opinion filed in this case by Mr. Justice G'onnor.
The Legislature shapes the administrative and political policy of the State, and its members are elected at short intervals for the purpose of conforming the direction of public affairs to the changing sentiment of the people and the progress of events. This policy must be put into operation through officers who are simply agents of the government. If a Legislature elected for two years can put in its agents for life or long terms, and keep them in by the Court’s holding that office is a contract and incumbents are irremovable, such temporary Legislature can dominate the people for any period it may see fit to fix for the duration of offices filled or created by it. This is a denial of the foundation principle of all American government- — the sovereignty of the people. The fact that the Constitution fixes the term, of certain officers and forbids a diminution of their salaries is of itself conclusive that all other officers and their salaries are not thus protected, but are subject to change and control by the people acting through subsequent Legislatures.
It must be remembered that when Hoke v. Henderson was decided the United States Supreme Court had not then held, as it soon afterwards did in Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 Howard, 402, 416, that an office was not a contract and not protected by the contract clause of the Federal Constitution. This doctrine that Court has uniformly maintained ever since, notably in Newton v. Commissioners, 100 U. S., 548; Blake *165v. U. S., 103 U. S., 227; Crenshaw v. U. S., 134 U. S., 99, and many other eases, including the late decision in Taylor v. Beckham, 178 U. S., 511. Had those decisions or any one of them been rendered in 1833, it is quite certain Hoke v. Henderson would have been decided the other way, for the construction placed by the United States Stipreme Court upon any clause of the Federal Constitution is conclusive upon all other courts.
For well-nigh forty years Hoke v. Henderson was applied to no controversy over an office. In Mills v. Williams, 33 N. C., 358 (1851), it was not cited but disregarded and practically overruled, both in the reasoning of the opinion and its effect, which was to hold that all the duties and emoluments of the office of Sheriff of Polk County were transferred intact to the Sheriff of Rutherford County. In Cotten v. Ellis, 52 N. C., 548, it is true Hoke v. Henderson was cited, but the decision rested on a different point — that the State could not vacate a Federal office. The Legislature of 1865 disregarded Hoke v. Henderson by vacating legislative offices and even filling such judgeships as it saw fit with new men. In 1868 the convention again did the same thing by the judges which Hoke v. Henderson held could not be done as to clerks, i. e., changed the appointive life tenure into an elective term of years. This could not have been done if office were a contract, for the_ Federal Constitution forbids any "State to pass any law to impair the obligation of a contract.” The restriction was upon the State, not merely upon 'its Legislature. The prohibition applies to a Convention as well as to the Legislature. Louisiana v. Taylor, 105 U. S., 445, and other cases cited, 125 N. C., at p. 285. As already stated, every judge who took his seat upon tire bench in 1868 took it in defiance to Hoke v. Henderson. The officers turned out in 1868 held, not by virtue of any authority recognized *166in 1861-’65, but they had all been inducted in 1865, after the war closed, or later.
After being thus silent and practically disregarded, without a single application of it for near forty years, Hoke v. Henderson was resurrected after the change in the political majority in the General Assembly in consequence of tire elections of 1870' and 1872. Its invocation and somewhat more extended application thwarted the effort of the people, through their new representatives, to control the policy of the State, in changing the incumbents of offices, created by former Legislatures with men of views in accord with the change expressed at the ballot-box. Later on, however, Hoke v. Henderson was practically ignored, or much limited, in Bunting v. Gales, 77 N. C., 283; Winslow v. Morton, 118 N. C., 486, and other cases.
In Wood v. Bellamy there was an application of Holce v. Henderson in a case where new incumbents were placed in offices as to which there had been no change of duties but a change of names only. This decision was within the limits of the original decision. It was the subsequent cases, beginning with Prison v. Day, 124 N. C., 362, which carried it further, causing it to be denied and its ultimate and inevitable overthrow. In Ward v. Elizabeth, City, 120 N. C., 1, attention was for the first time called by the writer to the fact that the decision in Holce v. Henderson had been denied in all other States, and while admitting that it had been recognized in this State, it was held that Ward was not protected by it. In Caldwell v. Wilson, 121 N. C., 425, in a very able opinion by Douglas, J., it was again shown (at pages 467 and 468) that Hoke v. Henderson was contrary to all precedents elsewhere, and the opinion was expressed that the doctrine had been “carried to its fullest legitimate extent” here, and Wilson, like Ward, was held not protected by it in his office.
*167With the subsequent expansion of the doctrine to new territory and wider fields, it can serve no purpose now to deal. Those matters have been fully discussed in the opinions and dissenting and concurring opinions filed in the various “office-holding cases,” from Day’s case, supra, in which the Legislature was denied power to control the Penitentiary, down through various offices to Taylor v. Vann, 127 N. C., 249, which was as to the costs in an action to recover a $2 per annum office (member of County Board of Education) when the term of the officer had expired before judgment.
Thus expanded, the doctrine necessarily destroyed itself. The people of the State could not and would not be prohibited and controlled in the management of their own institutions and their public policies by judge-made law, which was denied by all other courts, including the highest at Washington. The doctrine has existed nowhere else. The conflict between the Court and the General Assembly could not continue. No act of the Legislature could terminate it. Every * time the question has been presented in all these years it has been raised upon an act of the Legislature which had been passed in disregard of Hoke v. Henderson. Its assertion could be renounced only by the Court. This it has now done, explicitly, clearly, and the doctrine of private property in public office, started on its course by the decision in Hoke v. Henderson, will, like the ghost in Hamlet, “no longer ivalk the earth” to disquiet the peace.