duties or powers of any department, not by the Constitution disposed of or distributed to some particular officers of that department, are left to the disposal of the Legislature.-Ross vs. Whitman, 6 Cal., p. 361. This Article does not place either department of the State Government above the law, nor make either independent of the other.-McCauley vs. Brooks, 16 Cal., p. 11. ARTICLE IV. LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT. SECTION 1. Senate and Assembly, and enacting clause of laws. 2. Sessions of the Legislature. 3. Election and term of Assemblymen. 4. Qualifications of Legislators. 5. Election and term of Senators. 6. Number and classes of Senators. 7. Number of Senators, when increased. 8. Organization of Legislative Houses. 10. Rules for their government, and expulsions. 12. Members privileged from arrest and summons. 14. Open doors, and secret sessions. 15. Adjournments, how long and where to. 16. Origin and passage of bills. 17. Bills to be approved by the Governor or returned vetoed; passage over the veto. 18. Assembly to present, and Senate to try articles of im peachment. 19. What officers liable to impeachment. Judgment in what. 20. Member ineligible to office created during his term of office. 21. Persons holding lucrative offices under the United States Government, etc., ineligible to office under State Government. Proviso. 22. Embezzlement or defalcation of public funds by officer. Penalty. 23. Public moneys and accounts, how disposed of and kept, and published with laws. 24. Compensation, how fixed. 25. Title of laws; how revised and amended. 26. Divorces shall not be granted by Legislature. 27. Lotteries prohibited. 28. Census, when and how taken. Number of members. 29. Apportionment of Legislators. Senate and Assembly, and enacting clause of laws. SECTION 30. Congressional, Senatorial, and Assembly Districts. 32. Dues of corporations, and individual liability therefor. 34. Banks of deposit authorized. 35. Banks of circulation prohibited. 36. Individual liability of corporators for debt. 37. Organization of municipal corporations. 38. Legislative elections to be viva voce. 39. Amendments to Article IV not to affect official incum bency. SECTION 1. The Legislative power of this State shall be vested in a Senate and Assembly, which shall be desig nated the Legislature of the State of California, and the enacting clause of every law shall be as follows: "The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows." NOTE.-The Legislature has the power to declare who shall be competent to testify, and the power to regulate the production of evidence in the Courts of this State.-People vs. Brady, 40 Cal., p. 198. In this case The People vs. Washington, 36 Cal., p. 658, was reviewed and overruled. Congress has no authority to legislate concerning the rules of evidence in State Courts, nor to affix conditions upon which those rules are to be applied and enforced.-Duffy vs. Hobson, 40 Cal., p. 240. The Legislature may provide a punishment for counterfeiting money.-People vs. White, 34 Cal., p. 705. A State Legislature cannot confer jurisdiction upon Federal Courts, or prescribe the means or mode of its exercise.-Greely vs. Townsend, 25 Cal., p. 613. Power of a Legislature to delegate its authority, discussed in Ex Parte Shrader, 33 Cal., p. 279. The legislative department represents the mass of political powers. It is no further controlled as to its powers or mode of their exercise than by the restrictions of the Constitution. It may enact laws in its own form, and give to them such effect to be worked out in such a way and by such means as it chooses to prescribe. It may provide that laws shall go into effect at one time or another, absolutely or on condition upon certain terms or in a certain event, or without regard to future events. It may make local laws depend for effect upon the will of all the voters of a locality, or upon the will of a majority, or upon the assent of a few.-Hobart vs. Supervisors of Butte Co., 17 Cal., p. 23. If a law is passed providing that certain acts may of the SEC. 2. The sessions of the Legislature shall be bien- Sessions nial, and shall commence on the first Monday of December Legislature next ensuing the election of its members, unless the Governor of the State shall, in the interim, convene the Legislature by proclamation. No session shall continue. longer than one hundred and twenty days. SEC. 3. The members of the Assembly shall be chosen biennially, by the qualified electors of their respective districts, on the first Wednesday in September, unless otherwise ordered by the Legislature, and their term of office shall be two years. Election and term of men. tions of SEC. 4. Senators and members of Assembly shall be Qualificaduly qualified electors in the respective counties and dis- Legislators tricts which they represent. SEC. 5. Senators shall be chosen for the term of four years, at the same time and places as members of the Assembly; and no person shall be a member of the Senate or Assembly who has not been a citizen and inhabitant of the State and of the county or district for which he shall be chosen one year next before his election. 50-VOL. II.-POL. Election Senators. and term of Number and classes SEC. 6. The number of Senators shall not be less than of Senators. one third, nor more than one half, of that of the members Number of when increased. Organiza tion of of the Assembly; and at the first session of the Legisla ture after this section takes effect, the Senators shall be divided by lot, as equally as may be, into two classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year, so that one half shall be chosen biennially. SEC. 7. When the number of Senators is increased they shall be apportioned by lot, so as to keep the two classes as nearly equal in number as possible. SEC. 8. Each House shall choose its own officers, and Legislative judge of the qualifications, elections, and returns of its own members. Houses. What number constitutes a quorum. Rules for their govern ment, and expulsions Each Members privileged and summons. SEC. 9. A majority of each House shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under such penalties as each House may provide. SEC. 10. Each House shall determine the rule of its own proceedings, and may, with the concurrence of two thirds of all the members elected, expel a member. SEC. 11. Each House shall keep a Journal of its own proceedings, and publish the same; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of any three members present, be entered on the Journal. SEC. 12. Members of the Legislature shall, in all cases from arrest except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privi leged from arrest, and shall not be subject to any civil process during the session of the Legislature, nor for fif teen days next before the commencement and after the termination of each session. Vacancies, how filled. SEC. 13. When vacancies occur in either House, the Governor, or the person exercising the functions of the Governor, shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. Open doors and secret SEC. 14. The doors of each House shall be open, except on such occasions as, in the opinion of the House, may sessions. require secrecy. ments, how SEC. 15. Neither House shall, without the consent of Adjournthe other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which they may be sitting. SEC. 16. Any bill may originate in either House of the Legislature, and all bills passed by one House may be amended in the other. SEC. 17. Every bill which may have passed the Legislature shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the Governor. If he approve it, he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections, to the House in which it originated, which shall enter the same upon the Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, it again pass both Houses, by yeas and nays, by a majority of two thirds of the members of each House present, it shall become a law, notwithstanding the Governor's objections. If any bill shall not be returned. within ten days after it shall have been presented to him (Sundays excepted), the same shall become a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Legislature, by adjournment, prevent such return. NOTE. The ten days given the Governor in which to return a bill must be computed by excluding the day on which the bill was presented to the Governor, and the Sundays that may intervene.-Price vs. Whitman, 8 Cal., p. 412. In computing the ten days within which a bill may be returned by the Governor, the day on which the bill was presented to the Governor must be excluded from the computation.-Iron Mountain Co. vs. Haight, 39 Cal., p. 540. An adjournment of either House from day to day is not such an adjournment as would prevent the Governor from returning a bill with his objections. If on the last day on which the bill can be returned the House has adjourned for the day, the bill should be placed beyond the Executive control long and where to. |