tionable. The general rule may, in some instances, produce hardship; but if ignorance of the law was admitted as an excuse, too wide a door would be left open for the breach of it." Where statutes are liable to produce injustice by taking immediate effect, the legislature will, except through inadvertence, appoint a future day from whence they are to be in force. Blackstone, after treating of the promulgation of laws, and the duty of legislatures to make them public, says, "all laws should therefore be made to commence in futuro, and be notified before their commencement, which is implied in the term prescribed."7 § 173 (105). Acts of parliament formerly took effect from the first day of the session.-By the common law the parliament roll being the exclusive record of statutes, and no other date appearing than that of the beginning of the session, laws took effect from that date, when no other was provided by the act. Until the statute of 33 Geo. III., ch. 13, there was no indorsement on the roll of the day on which the bills received the royal assent, and all acts passed in the same session were considered as having received the royal assent on the same day, and were referred to the first day of the session. By the statute of 33 Geo. III. it was 71 Black. Com. 45; 1 Kent's Com. 458; Ship Cotton Planter, 1 Paine, 23, Fed. Cas. No. 3270; Cross v. Harrison, 16 How. 196, 14 L. Ed. 889. See Lessee of Albertson v. Robeson, 1 Dall. 9. Yeates, J., in Morgan v. Stell, 5 Bin. 318, gave this statement of the case: Albertson, claiming certain lands by descent in Bucks county, brought an ejectment against Robeson for their recovery. The title of the land was clearly shown to have been at one time in the ancestor of the lessee of the plaintiff; but at a subsequent period the lands were decreed to the defendant by this court, in pursuance of certain chancery powers delegated to them by an old act of assembly. The royal assent was refused to this law in England, and it so happened that the repeal precedes the decree of the court above two months, but the repeal was not known here when the decree was made. The court determined, upon full argument, that the unknown repeal could not affect the right of the defendant under the decree, and the jury found accordingly, and the decision gave general satisfaction to the profession. 8 Rex v. Justices of Middlesex, 2 provided that a certain parliamentary officer should indorse on every act of parliament "the day, month and year when the same shall have passed and shall have received the royal assent; and such indorsement shall be taken to be a part of such act, and to be the date of its commencement, where no other commencement shall be therein provided." § 174 (106). The actual date of passage adopted in this country. The injustice of permitting laws to have retroactive effect by relation is so manifest that it has not had much countenance in the United States. Without depart ing from the rule, except by constitutional direction, that the legislative record is conclusive, statutes have not generally bad effect from any date prior to their actual passage. The fiction that all laws are enacted on the first day of the legislative session is not adopted. The actual date either appears in pursuance of legislative and executive practice upon the statute itself, or it is otherwise shown by official records; and this date is popularly known and judicially recognized.9 In North Carolina the fiction appears to be recognized as part of the common law, and all laws take effect by relation from the first day of the session.10 Courts are bound ex officio to take notice as well of the time when public acts go into operation as of their provisions." Statutes of the same session passed on different days are not to be regarded as having effect from the same day because they pertain to the same subject.12 § 175 (107). The legislature may fix a future day for an act to take effect.- The power to enact laws includes Barn. & Ad. 818; Panter v. Att'y General, 6 Brown, P. C. 486; Latless v. Holmes, 4 T. R. 660; Part ridge v. Strange, 1 Plow. 79; King v. Thurston, 1 Lev. 91; Bac. Abr., title Statute, C.; 1 Kent's Com. 456. 10 Hamlet v. Taylor, 5 Jones' L. 36; Weeks v. Weeks, 5 Ired. Eq. 111, 47 Am. Dec. 358. See Boston v. Cummins, 16 Ga. 102, 60 Am. Dec. 717, 722. 11 State v. Foote, 11 Wis. 14. 9 Turnipseed v. Jones, 101 Ala. Metropolitan Board v. Schmades, 593, 14 So. 377. 10 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) 205. the power, subject to constitutional restrictions, to provide when in the future, and upon what conditions or event, they shall take effect. Where a particular time for the commencement of a statute is appointed, it only begins to have effect and to speak from that time, unless a different intention is manifest," and will speak and operate from the beginning of that day.15 Where the provisions of a revising statute are to take effect at a future period, and the statute contains a clause repealing the former statute upon the same subject, the repealing clause will not take effect until the other provisions come into operation. The period between the passage of a law and the time of its going into effect is allowed to enable the public to become acquainted with its provisions; but until it becomes a law they are not compelled to govern their actions by it. Thus, an act which was to go into effect at a future day established new periods of time for the limitation of actions. It was held not 16 applicable to a case having several years to run where the act would be a bar the moment it took effect. It could not operate to put the party on diligence before it went into 13 People v. Salomon, 51 Ill. 37; New Orleans v. Holmes, 13 La. Ann. 502; Carpenter v. Montgomery, 7 Blackf. 415; Gorham v. Springfield, 21 Me. 58; Cooper v. Curtis, 30 id. 488; Parkinson v. State, 14 Md. 184. 14 Bac. Abr., tit. Statutes, C.; Rice v. Ruddiman, 10 Mich. 125; Price v. Hopkin, 13 Mich. 318; Gilkey v. Cook, 60 Wis. 133; Jackman v. Garland, 64 Me. 133; Swann v. Buck, 40 Miss. 305; Grinad v. State, 34 Ga. 270; Fairchild v. Gwynne, 14 Abb. Pr. 121; Latless v. Holmes, 4 T. R. 660; Panter v. AttorneyGeneral, 6 Brown, P. C. 486; Dean v. King, 13 Ired. L. 20; Wheeler v. Chubbuck, 16 Ill. 361; Boston v. Cummins, 16 Ga. 102, 60 Am. Dec. 717; Evansville, etc. R. R. Co. v. Barbee, 74 Ind. 169; Larrabee v. Talbott, 5 Gill, 426, 46 Am. Dec. 637; Charless v. Lamberson, 1 Iowa, 435; Davenport v. Railroad Co., 37 id. 624; Wohlscheid v. Bergrath, 46 Mich. 46. See Fosdick v. Perrysburg, 14 Ohio St. 472; Town of Fox v. Town of Kendall, 97 Ill. 72, 75. Upon the enactment of a new penalty for an offense, the former penalty is not superseded until the statute prescribing the new penalty takes effect. Grinad v. State, 34 Ga. 270. 15 Rice v. Ruddiman, 10 Mich. 125; Turnipseed v. Jones, 101 Ala. 593, 14 So. 377. 16 Spaulding v. Alford, 1 Pick. 33. operation. As it gave him no future time after it became a law, it was inoperative as to that case."7 Where a general statute provides that acts shall take effect at a specified day after the adjournment of the session, it will govern all future legislation unless there is some indication of a contrary purpose.18 Acquiescence in such a statute is presumed unless dissent is shown.19 It will govern private as well as public acts.20 An act may be brought into effect at an earlier day than that appointed in its provisions by an amendatory or supplemental act. Thus the Mississippi constitution provides that, if acts are silent on the time when they shall take effect, they shall go into effect sixty days after their passage. After an original act a supplemental act was passed which provided that it go into effect immediately. This provision was held to embrace and give immediate effect to the original act." A statute may be framed to take effect on the happening of a future event,22 and this event may be the passage of a law in another state.23 § 176 (108). Constitutional provisions regulating the time of acts taking effect-Emergency clause. In many state constitutions are regulations of this sort: that acts shall take effect a certain number of days after their passage, or after the end of the session, unless the acts themselves otherwise provide. In several a larger majority is 24 17 Price v. Hopkin, 13 Mich. 318. But see Hedger v. Rennaker, 3 Met. (Ky.) 255; Stine v. Bennett, 13 Minn. 153; Smith v. Morrison, 22 Pick. 430. See post, §§ 706, 707. 18 Ross v. New England Mortg. Security Co., 101 Ala. 362, 13 So. 564; Santa Cruz Water Co. v. Kron, 74 Cal. 223, 15 Pac. 772; Matter of Howe, 112 N. Y. 100, 19 N. E. 513, 2 L. R. A. 825. 19 Jackman v. Garland, 64 Me.. 20 Cooper v. Curtis, 30 Me. 488. 21 West F. R. R. Co. v. Johnson, 5 How. (Miss.) 273; Swann v. Buck, 40 Miss. 268. 22 Ante, § 96; In re Hendricks, 5 N. D. 114, 64 N. W. 110. 231 Am. & Eng. Corp. Cas. 1. 24 Day v. McGinnis, 1 Heisk. 310; Gorham v. Springfield, 21 Me. 58; New Portland v. New Vineyard, 16 Me. 69. required to give immediate effect to an act than to pass it; in others there must be some emergency to warrant it. These provisions are mandatory.25 Where it is required by the constitution that an act shall declare that an emergency exists for making it take immediate effect, such declaration cannot be omitted. If the emergency clause be absent, the provision that the act take immediate effect will, under such constitutional requirement, be held void, and the act will take effect as though silent on that subject.26 The emergency clause in an act passed June 14, 1852, regulating the remission of fines and forfeitures, declared the act to be in force from and after its being filed with the clerks of the circuit courts in their respective counties. It was held that the legislature intended the act to be brought into force as soon as it could be distributed in the several counties, and though there is no express direction to the secretary of state to distribute it, the emergency clause implies such a direction; it is held also that the secretary of state is to be presumed to have done his duty, and hence that the act was in force on the 20th day of December, 1852.27 What may be deemed an emergency for this purpose is purely a legislative question. The courts will not inquire into it, nor entertain any question of its sufficiency.23 An act which contains an emergency clause and provides that it "shall take effect and be in force from and after its approval by the governor," and on his vetoing it is passed by both houses over the veto, takes effect immediately after its passage.29 Where the constitution provides that acts shall not gointo effect until ninety days after the adjournment of the legislature, unless passed with an emergency clause by at two-thirds vote of all the members elected to either house, to be entered on the journals, an emergency clause will be 25 Ante, SS 30, 44. 26 Cain v. Goda, 84 Ind. 209. 27 State v. Dunning, 9 Ind. 20; Stine v. Bennett, 13 Minn. 153. 28 Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409; 11 id. 224; Carpenter v. Montgomery, 7 Blackf. 415. 29 Biggs v. McBride, 17 Ore. 640, 21 Pac. 878. |