Page:Address of Frederick V. Holman at Oregon Bar Association annual meeting.djvu/36

 this Section 5 of Article XI was repealed by the amendments of 1906, or that by amendment of its charter by the people of Portland, this limitation would be amended or repealed. It is but additional evidence showing the imprudence of initiative measures when such a question is left in doubt.

If these two opinions in the Kiernan case are those of the whole Supreme Court of Oregon then it may be said that, under the amendments of 1906, a city may, by initiative amendment of its charter, give itself the right to exercise, within its corporate limits, the power of Eminent Domain, and to construct bridges and other obstructions in a navigable river wholly within the State without authority from the Legislature or from the people of the rest of the State who may be affected thereby, and without the sanction of Congress.

The main points decided in the Kiernan case are, that the power to construct bridges was given by the Legislature by Section 76 of Portland's charter, and that "there is fair ground for the contention that the city may, by amendment of its charter, obtain the right to erect a public bridge over the Willamette River at any point where such river is exclusively within the municipal boundaries," and that 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," and that the construction of a bridge over the Willamette River is "purely municipal," and further, that a taxpayer cannot raise the question as to whether such a bridge is against the acts of Congress relating to navigable streams.

What will the Supreme Court of the United States say as to the right of the City of Portland to build such a bridge, considering the Act of Congress of September 19, 1890?

If Portland should cause a bridge to be erected at each street, or most of the streets, abutting on the Willamette River it would practically confiscate all deep water front on the Willamette River as far south as the rapids at the mouth of the Clackamas River, and be of great detriment to the people of the Willamette Valley outside of Portland and prejudicial