People ex rel. Attorney General v. Hill

Citations

• 7 Cal. 97

Syllabus

<p>A law which provides that an officer may he removed in a certain way, or for a certain cause, does not restrain or limit the power of removal to the cause or manner indicated.</p> <p>The power to remove is an incident to the power to appoint, as a general proposition, and is made so expressly by the Constitution.</p> <p>The only way in which this power of removal can be limited, is by first fixing the duration or term of office, and then providing the mode, if deemed necessary, by which the officer may be removed during the term.</p> <p>It seems that a law, providing that a party shall not be removed from office, except in a given case, where the duration of the office is not declared, would be unconstitutional.</p> <p>There is no constitutional inhibition against incorporating a portion of the inhabitants of a county as a city, or creating a county out of the territory of a city.</p> <p>As a city may, by legislative enactment, spring from the body of a county, there is no reason in law why it may not be resolved back into its original elements, or why the power which called this political being into existence, may not again destroy.</p> <p>It seems that the act consolidating the city and county of San Francisco is not unconstitutional.</p> <p>An error in the act which defeats the first election held under it in that portion of the original county excluded from the consolidation, is not of itself sufficient to warrant a decision that the whole act is unconstitutional, especially when the Legislature is in session to remedy the defect.</p> <p>The Legislature has the power so to change the “Assembly Districts,” as to join two counties in one district.</p>