Pattison v. Bd. of Supervisors of Yuba Cty.

Citations

• 13 Cal. 175

Syllabus

<p>Queue : Whether a tax-payer can interfere by injunction, to restrain the performance of a ministerial duty cast upon public officers by law, merely upon the ground that the effect, at some future time, if certain other things be done, might be to subject his property to taxation ?</p> <p>To render a law unconstitutional, because opposed to the general policy of the Constitution, that policy must be manifested by the terms of the Constitution, fixing with precision the particular rule, and not as gathered by general inference.</p> <p>The Sth Article of the Constitution, prohibiting the State from creating debts over three hundred thousand dollars, or loaning its credit, etc. only applies to the State as a corporation—as a political sovereign, represented by her law-making power; and does not prevent the State authorizing counties or municipal corporations, to create debts, when the debt of the State itself is up to the constitutional limit.</p> <p>The State may have political subdivisions—that is, she may permit a portion of her powers of government to be exercised by local Agents. But, politically considered, geographical or political departments are no more the State, or a part of the State, than a man’s land or his agent is a part of himself.</p> <p>There is no difference in this respect between a municipal corporation and a county. They are both political and geographical divisions of the State. They are both the subjects of its political dominion.</p> <p>The Legislature has a right to authorize a local tax for the purpose of internal improvements ; it may authorize the local authorities to impose the tax; this authority may be given upon petition or without it, or by, or without, a submission of the proposition to the people, and it is not essential that the improvement should be within, or confined to the locality taxed, and a subscription for stock, to be paid for by taxation, is a valid contract to pay it.</p> <p>Under the Act of April 28th, 1857, authoriz