The Harrison Times

LAW CONSOLIDATING ELECTIONS CLEARED

OFFICERS WHOSE TERMS EXPIRE IN 1918 NEED NOT BECOME CANDIDATES THIS YEAR.

SUPREME COURT DECIDES

However, the Interpretation of Specific Wording of Statute Must Be Made to Conform With Spirit and Intention of the Act.

Little Rock.-- The Supreme Court handed down an opinion construing that part of the law consolidating national and state elections as applied to the election of supreme judges, chancellors and circuit judges, holding that judicial officers, whose terms expire in 1918, need not become candidates this year in the event they desired to retain their positions.

"It must be conceded," says the court, "that a literal reading of the statute sustains the contention that the judges must run, for the statute provides in so many words that the election shall be 'for judges of the supreme and circuit courts, when the term of office of any judge shall expire before the next general election.'"

The court held, however, that the interpretation of the specific wording of the statute must be made to conform with the spirit and intention of the act.

"There are several reasons why it is apparent that the framers of the statute did not intend what a liberal meaning of the statute as a whole would imply. In the first place, the statute provides that senators of the United States shall be elected at each biennial election, but we know that the lawmakers did not intend to accomplish that result, inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States fixes the terms of senators at six years. In the next place, the interpretation contended for would require all of the state senators, those whose terms begin in the year 1918, as well as those whose terms begin in the present year, to be elected at the next election, to be held in November, 1916. It is inconceivable that that was the intention of the framers of the statute, for it is certainly contrary to the policy of the state to elect senators so long a time before the commencement of their services. Besides, it would be in direct conflict with the express letter of the constitution, which provides that the terms of senators shall begin with the dates of their election."