Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/107

On Power to Increase Supreme Court ioi in the constitution that the separate Supreme Court thus authorized and thus to be created at a time far in the future was to be limited m its membership and always confined to three justices. If it had been so intended the invariable rule elsewhere observed in the constitution would have been, to have placed inhibitory and negative words clearly expressing this intention. Yours very respectfully, (Signed) WM. D. FENTON. NOTE. Since this opinion was written the business of the Supreme Court of Oregon has vastly increased, and we now have fifty volumes of reports issued, and Volume 51 is about ready for publication, an increase of twenty volumes since January, 1899. We now have thirteen judicial districts instead of four, when the constitution was framed, and twenty circuit judges instead of four, at that time. These facts indicate the necessity justi- fying the wisdom of the act of the legislative assembly enacted February 12, 1909 (See Chapter 50, Laws of Oregon 1909, p. 99), but do not justify the enactment of the statute in question if such act be clearly in violation of the constitution of the state. The question has been raised upon a motion of the attorney general of the state and the deputy district attorney of the Fourth Judicial District, filed in the Supreme Court of the state in the case of State of Oregon v. Sam Cochran, to direct the clerk of the Supreme Court to issue its mandate in that case affirming a judgment of conviction in the court below in a local option case involving the validity of an ordinance of the town of St. Johns, under which Cochran held a license to sell intoxicating liquors at retail. Mr. Justice McBride, elected as the successor of Mr. Justice Bean, and Mr. Justices Slater and King, appointed by the governor as additional judges provided by Chapter 50, supra, concurred in