State ex rel. Husting v. Board of State Canvassers

Citations

• 159 Wis. 216
• 150 N.W. 542
• 1914 Wisc. LEXIS 399

Syllabus

<p>Elections: Returns: Canvass: Time -for completion not affected by recount proceedings: Construction of statutes: Constitutional law: Mandamus.</p> <p>1. It is the duty of the court to firmly maintain its own function, hut not trespass upon that of the legislature. The former requires solution of doubts respecting legislative purpose intended to he embodied in an enactment and the pronounced result becomes, in effect, written into such enactment.</p> <p>2. If by judicial construction a legislative enactment embodies a purpose which is unconstitutional it must be condemned.</p> <p>3. If part of an enactment is unconstitutional and the remainder is not, and is reasonably complete by itself, and the former was not such inducement to the entirety but what the latter might, within reasonable probability, have been enacted by itself, to that extent it should be approved and otherwise disapproved.</p> <p>4. If a legislative enactment is so uncertain that the court cannot determine with any reasonable degree of certainty, what its purpose was, or if it be so incomplete that it cannot be executed, it must be condemned as void.</p> <p>5. In construing an ambiguous legislative enactment some established rules are to be observed as unwritten law with all the force of written law, and among them:</p> <p>(a) No attempt to read a legislative enactment different from its plain words and evident meaning on its face is legitimate, if so read it “leads to no absurd consequences.”</p> <p>(b) There should be real uncertainty of meaning found in a legislative enactment before resorting to reading it by aid of rules for judicial construction.</p> <p>(c) Whether the meaning of words of an enactment are plain is to be determined with reference to the connections in which they are used, the subject dealt with, the circumstances at the time, and the object in view.</p> <p>(d) The term “and leads to no absurd consequences” requires the rule that ambiguity requiring judicial construction may