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1916, Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania objected because the Clerk was rattling through the reading of the Journal, making it a farce, the Senator thought. His point of order was brushed aside, but he succeeded in saying: "There has been too much of a practice in the last two months of passing bills without reading them, just reading the titles. I have known prominent lawyers in Pennsylvania and prominent citizens who had been sitting in the galleries come away with signs of disgust at the way the public business has been proceeded with in this body during the last six weeks. It is absurd to pass bills by only reading their titles, and even that reading conducted in a rambling fashion."

Mr. Penrose came from Pennsylvania. The Constitution of that State has said since 1873: "Every bill shall be read at length on three different days in each House." The laws passed at the session of 1915 cover 1107 pages, with about 525,000 words. The speaker who enunciates more than two hundred words a minute must have an entertaining subject and be gifted with rare oratorical power to hold the attention of his audience and be understood. At half that rate of speed, most men would not comprehend a statute. But allow the reading clerk two hundred words a minute and you will find that it would take him about fortyfour hours say eight days to give the Pennsylvania laws enacted in one session a single reading. Her Constitution calls for six readings- three in each branch. That makes eight weeks of words for only the laws enacted. To this must be added all the bills introduced that had but one reading, as well as those that succumbed after getting farther along the road. Would three months be an extravagant estimate for the aggregate?

The mere statement of these figures shows the folly of the thing. Of course no body of sane men would endure such an imposition on human powers of suffering. What takes place? Judge by the story Samuel Bryan Scott tells of a filibuster against the school code toward the end of the session of 1909. This enormous bill, containing hundreds of sections, had to meet determined opposition to many of its provisions, and, merely for the purpose of delay, the opponents of the measure demanded that it be read word for word. The weary night dragged on. The weary clerks droned on, while a vigilant filibusterer sat at their feet and, with finger on page, followed the text to see that nothing was omitted. After a while the clerks collapsed entirely and volunteers from the members took up the work. Gradually

the members drifted out, or went to sleep in their chairs. If a quorum remained, it is certain that less than a quorum was awake. At last it struck some original soul that the constitutional requirement would be satisfied if several read at once, beginning at different places. So a reading squad of ten was organized and all read simultaneously. The scene that followed suggested a strike on the tower of Babel. The idea was, no doubt, unsound constitutionally, but practically it broke up the filibuster and saved the school code for the more dignified death of the Governor's axe. At the next session, however, a similar bill was passed and signed.1

Everywhere that such requirements prevail the inevitable result is that the Constitutions are not observed, which is bad for the Constitutions and bad for the public. It is one of the utterly absurd and wholly useless ways in which we breed disregard for law. In Illinois, with a Constitution calling for reading "at length," the bulletin prepared in 1919 to aid a Constitutional Convention said the practice had developed of entering on the Journal a statement that a bill had been read at large on three separate days, when in fact this had not been done. In either House of the Illinois General Assembly, for a member to insist that a bill be read in full is to employ obstructive tactics in connection with the conduct of legislative business. The Constitution of California says that "on the final passage of all bills they shall be read at length." Hichborn's "Story of the California Legislature of 1909" avers that in the course of the last three weeks of the session each House made records of passing more than a hundred bills a day. Were they read at length? Impossible. What takes place wherever such conditions prevail is that usually the alleged compliance with Constitution or rule that gets recorded in the Journal has been a farcical pretense. The Clerk mumbles the first few and the last few words, or contents himself with merely the title, and lets it go at that. Then with a complacent conscience he covers up the fraud by a false entry on the Journal, which the courts will not question.

These are hard words with which to characterize a widespread practice at which many honorable men connive. From one point of view they are justified. In fairness to them it should be pointed out that this would be a sorry world if we had invariably to live up to the letter of the law, and sorrier still if with two 1 State Government in Pennsylvania, 25.

constructions of a law possible, we insisted on the more inconvenient. The courts are for the most part human enough to recognize these practical conditions, and to find a way for meeting them if it be possible. For instance, under the provision of the Michigan Constitution, that "every bill shall be read three times in each House before the final passage thereof," it has been the practice for many years to read bills the first and second time by title, and the third time at length, unless by unanimous consent the third reading be dispensed with. In Hart v. McElroy, 72 Mich. 446 (1888), the court refused to overthrow the practice, saying: "It would deprive us of all statutory law. The Constitution, in terms, does not direct that the reading shall be at length, and while such reading might be the better practice, we cannot hold that it is imperatively required that it should be so read more than once."

There are half a dozen or more of other States where the same question might make trouble because the Constitution requires reading without defining it at all. A joint committee of the Iowa Legislature concluded in 1897 that if it be doubtful whether a court would construe the provision as mandatory or directory so far as it relates to the full reading of a bill, "then the wise, prudent, and careful legislator would resolve the doubt in such a way as to avoid the question of the constitutionality of the law being raised, and we think should insist on a full reading." The Iowa "Legislative Manual" discreetly says: "In practice the reading clerk goes through the form of giving a bill its full reading."

Where the terms of a Constitution are explicit, the judges cannot be expected to disregard their plain purport. It is hard to see how the Supreme Court of Minnesota could have avoided the answer it gave to the question of whether the constitutional requirements about the reading of bills were mandatory. The matter came up in Bd. of Supervisors of Ramsey County v. Heenan, 2 Minn. 281. Though the act involved was sustained, the court said the provision, that "no bill shall be passed either House until it shall have been read twice at length," was intended to be absolute, and it was intended that the validity of legislation should depend upon compliance. Nevertheless in Minnesota practice the titles alone of the bills are read, the appropriation bills being the only ones that are read by sections and in full, this being on account of the number of amendments usually offered.

The problem is not quite so serious when a legislative rule rather than a constitutional provision is in issue, but the principle involved is the same. We are told that although the rule of the Wisconsin Senate calls for the third reading at length of all bills appropriating money, it specifies that suspension of the rule may be had by unanimous consent, and in practice that is what takes place, only the appropriation clause being read. Why the rule? There are, to be sure, rules just as there are laws, many of them wisely preserved though not often observed, that answer a most useful purpose on occasion. This is not that sort of a rule, but belongs in the quite different class of rules that, if ever to be enforced, should always be enforced. This may be seen from the real purpose behind the rule. That purpose, and the only defensible purpose, is to guard against surprise and deceit. An Illinois episode may illustrate what seemed to be the need. In 1863 a Senator introduced a bill purporting to grant a charter to the Wabash Railroad Company. Accepting his word that it was an ordinary charter, the Senate passed the bill without formal reading. In the House of Representatives it was likewise passed without reading or discussion. Instead of a bill to incorporate the Wabash Railroad Company, Governor Yates found a bill chartering a huge corporation authorized to build and operate a street railway on the principal streets and bridges in Chicago and its suburbs.

If the requirement of oral reading in full be made to guard against chicanery of that sort, strict compliance with the rule ought never to be waived or evaded. The requirement can be defended, however, only if no other safeguards, adequate and less wasteful, are at hand. Nowadays there are plenty of such safeguards to be found in every well-regulated Legislature. The printing press alone has in fact robbed the rule of what value it ever had. The eye is better than the ear for absorbing the contents of a document. So difficult is it to comprehend any but the simplest bills when they are read aloud in an assembly that most men will not even make the attempt. No bill is ever read aloud in some of the best Legislatures in the country. Experience shows the precaution wholly needless. It ought to go.

CHAPTER X

STAGES OF PROGRESS

ORDERLY discussion entails, of course, the reading of titles of bills, and various readings are necessary to mark the stages of progress. The significance of these will be better understood if something is known of their history. Originally the first problem of the man who wanted a law was to get the ear of the House. There were two ways of doing it. Whether a member or not, he could petition; or if he was a member, he could ask leave to introduce a bill. The second course required an answer to the question, and time was when assemblies discussed whether that answer should be Yes or No. Long ago, however, the request for leave to introduce became a mere form, an affirmative reply being taken as a matter of course.

that is, once the House

After the bill had been introduced had consented to listen the bill was read, and hence the "first reading of a bill." Next came the question of whether the proposal should be entertained; that is, whether the House would or would not discuss the subject. This brought the paradox of discussing a thing while they were discussing whether they would discuss it, and the outcome was that this stage became a discussion of policy of general principles as distinguished from details. Such it still remains in the English Parliament, in Canada, and very likely in all the other British possessions with lawmaking bodies. Doubtless, also, such was the practice in all the American colonies. At any rate, one of the rules adopted for the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1703 was: "That at the first Reading of Bills, the Members avoid any close Debate, and seriously deliberate on the Contents, in order to their better Information before the second Reading." Now, however, with us discussion at this stage has been generally if not wholly abandoned. Yet the forms to a considerable extent survive, though the life has gone out of them.

It is this survival that often puzzles novice or stranger. For instance, the rule of the National House still reads: "Bills and joint resolutions on their passage shall be read the first time by title and the second time in full." As a matter of fact that first

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