Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/103

Rh constitutional convention to amend the existing provision as to the salaries of supreme judges by declaring that their salaries should be $2,000 each per annum, and no more, and the amendment was voted down, leaving the implication that the object of the proposition in the constitution as it now stands was to fix the minimum and not the maximum amount of the salaries."

The opinions of these men are entitled to great weight. They have all been members of the Supreme Court except Ex-Governor Chadwick. Their views and their reasons are peculiarly applicable when we come to construe the words of the constitution contained in Section 10, Article 7. Section 10 has no words of express prohibition nor does it seem to me when read in the light of Section 2, Article 7, that there is any force in the suggestion that the designation of the number three is necessarily and certainly an exclusion and denial of power to increase such number by direct act of the legislative assembly. Those who take upon themselves the burden of this contention must run counter to the elementary rule by which state constitutions are to be construed. They do not point to words of prohibition, but to the implication that when a number was designated it excluded by implication any greater or less number. It may be that it is an implication that no less number should constitute the appellate tribunal, but the implication that a greater number might not be named is essentially at variance with the reasoning of these members of the constitutional convention and with all the authorities. A careful examination of the provisions of the constitution adds force to the contention that the designation of the number in section 10, article 7, was as it purports to be, not a grant of power, not a restriction upon the legislative assembly, but the creation of a tribunal known as the judiciary, and a co-ordinate branch of the state government, and some number had to be specified if there was to be more than one member constituting such court. The policy of the convention in using words of restriction where it was intended that such