Page:Address of Frederick V. Holman at Oregon Bar Association annual meeting.djvu/27

 "It will thus be seen that the Legislative Assembly has been deprived of the power specified, which is reserved to, and may be exercised by the legal voters of a city or town. As the Legislature could, heretofore, have changed a municipal charter or altered any part of it, except that vested rights could not be impaired or destroyed, it would seem necessarily to follow that, under the amended clause of the Organic Act quoted, the qualified voters of every town and city possessed the same measure of power."

In Farrell v. The Port of Portland, supra, Mr. Justice Bean, referring to the amendments of 1906, said:

"The manifest purpose, so far as it concerns the question now under consideration, was to take from the Legislature and vest in the people the power to amend municipal charters and acts governing and defining the powers and duties of all municipal corporations."

In Long V. City of Portland, supra, it was held that Section 11 of the Act of 1907, which provides that no city ordinance shall take effect and become operative until thirty days after its passage by the Council and approval by the Mayor, unless the same shall be passed over his veto, and in that case it shall not take effect and become operative until thirty days after such final passage, in effect, amends the charter of the City of Portland, for the reason that the right of the referendum is reserved to the people of the city regardless of any provisions of its charter, and that this right is superior to the charter, and that the amendments of 1906 and said Section 11 of the Act of 1907, to give the referendum force, did amend the charter of the City of Portland.

As I have set forth in the beginning, that, having no established precedents in these innovations by the initiative and referendum powers in the Constitution, it is difficult to make them workable. It is somewhat like navigating a ship in the open sea without chart, compass 6r chronometer. • It is true that under such circumstances a skillful mariner, with proper instruments, by observations of the sun, moon and stars, might navigate, but it would be difficult, and the liability to make errors would be great. It is a hard matter for any Court, without precedent, to take into account what may be the effect of a decision or opinion in one case on other cases or matters not before decided by any Court. And this is largely the position the Oregon Courts find themselves in. When the Supreme Court found what the effect would be in