Page:Address of Frederick V. Holman at Oregon Bar Association annual meeting.djvu/33

 a proprietor. The other opinion dissented from the first opinion, but held that under a general law of the Oregon Legislature, passed in 1891, prior to the adoption of any initiative amendment to the Oregon Constitution, the City of McMinnville had the right to appropriate lands for water works outside of its corporate limits. The effect of each of the two decisions was that the land could be appropriated. As to the views of the majority of the Supreme Court on this question, we are left in doubt, for the majority of the Court announced that they "concur in the conclusion reached in each of the foregoing opinions," the conclusions being the same.

The other case is that of Kiernan v. City of Portland et al., decided November 2, 1910, III Pac. Rep. 379. The facts in this case are that, by amendment of its charter under the amendments of 1906, the City of Portland gave itself the power and right to construct a bridge over the Willamette River, a navigable river wholly within the State of Oregon, without being specifically authorized thereto by the Legislature. There were two opinions rendered, the majority of the Court evidently concurring in the result, without announcement. In one of these opinions it is said:

"The people of this State by the Constitutional amendment, heretofore quoted, have seen fit to confer upon municipal corporations the right to enact their own charters, the only limitation upon that right being that such charters shall not conflict with the Constitution or the criminal laws of this State. We take it, therefore, that within the limits of the municipality, and for those purposes which are purely municipal, the City of Portland may include in its charter by amendment any provision or right that the Legislature might have granted before the Constitution was so amended. This being so, there is fair ground for the contention that the city may, by amendment to its charter, obtain the right to locate a public bridge over the Willamette River at any point where such river is exclusively within the municipal boundaries, which is the case here."

In the other opinion it is said:

"Section 118½ (passed pursuant to a Constitutional amendment) delegates to cities all the sovereignty of the State within their municipal boundaries, so far as that sovereignty relates to matters of purely municipal concern. Such grants of sovereignty, however, may be recalled by the power conferring them. (Straw v. Harris, 54 Ogn. 424), and this power of recall serves to prevent the abuse of the privileges delegated."