McCormick v. People

Citations

• 139 Ill. 499
• 28 N.E. 1106
• 1891 Ill. LEXIS 1236

Syllabus

<p>1. Repeal oe statutes—special charter of village repealed by general law—repeal by implication. The special charter of an incorporated town provided for the annual election of five trustees, who should at their first meeting elect one of their number president. In 1887 the legislature passed a general law concerning villages and incorporated towns, which provided that in addition to the trustees and officers required by law, a president of each and every village and incorporated town should thereafter be elected annually by the voters thereof, who should hold his office for one year and until his successor should be elected and qualified, who should preside at all meetings of the board of trustees, and perform the same duties'required of presidents of boards of trustees in villages, except that he should not vote except in case of a tie: Meld, that the provisions of the general law were so far in conflict with those of the special charter as to work a repeal of the latter by implication.</p> <p>2. Same—repeal of special act by general law. The presumption that the legislature, by a general law, does not intend to affect the provisions of a prior special act, prevails, unless that intention is manifested in express language, or there is something which shows that the attention of the legislature was turned to the special act, and that the general one was intended to embrace the special cases within it, or that there is something in the nature of the general act which makes it unlikely that an exception was intended as regards the special act.</p> <p>3. The rule that a general act will not operate as a repeal of a prior inconsistent special law, is only one of interpretation, and must therefore yield when the conclusion properly arises, from the language -of the general act, that it was the legislative intention to repeal or 'modify the provisions of the special act. There is no rule of law which prohibits the repeal of a special act by a general one.</p> <p>4. Pre