Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

The same language, exactly, including the specific designation of the qualifications and duties of the Deputy Public Printer, is contained in the sundry civil appropriation bill passed March 27, 1908, 35 Stat. 317, at page 381. Since that time the office of Deputy Public Printer has been provided for in each successive appropriation bill, without any reference to his qualifications or duties, and in none of these acts is there any appropriation for a chief clerk, until the passage of the act of March 4, 1911. That act, being the sundry civil appropriation act for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1912, 36 Stat. 1363, at page 1444, has the following provisions:

"PUBLIC PRINTING AND BINDING.-Office of the Public Printer: Public Printer, five thousand five hundred dollars; purchasing agent, three thousand six hundred dollars; chief clerk, two thousand five hundred dollars; "Office of the Deputy Public Printer: Deputy Public Printer, four thousand five hundred dollars;"

*

*

*

*

*

* *

"chief

It may be noted that the "private secretary" had become, in the appropriation act of 1910, "secretary to the Public Printer," and that the appropriation for such secretary was $2,500. So that the act of March 4, 1911, dropped this officer, and inserted in his place a clerk" at the same salary; and it is further to be noted that the qualifications required of the chief clerk by section 44 of the act of January 12, 1895, are not required of the chief clerk by the act of March 4, 1911.

The question, therefore, is what effect the appropriation act of 1907 had upon the office of chief clerk created under the act of January 12, 1895, and whether the provision for a "chief clerk" in the appropriation act of March 4, 1911, had the effect to revive that office with all the powers and functions belonging to it prior to the act of 1907 and under the act of January 12, 1895.

It is my judgment that the appropriation act of 1907, in providing for a deputy public printer, who should be skilled in the art, and who should "perform the duties heretofore required of the chief clerk" had the effect, in law, entirely

to abolish the office of chief clerk of the Government Printing Office. The failure to appropriate any money for the office, coupled with the transfer of all the duties thereof to another office, worked, in my opinion, as extinguishment of the office itself as completely as though Congress had abolished it by express terms, or had expressly repealed the sections of the act of January 12, 1895, creating that office, and defining its duties and functions. I am unable to conceive of an office existing in theory where the law prescribes no powers, duties, or functions, in connection therewith.

The following authorities seem to show that an office may be abolished indirectly, as well as directly, and that, where the legislature takes away all opportunity to perform the duties of the office, or places the office in another category, or transfers the duties of the office to another person or board, the office itself is abolished:

Ware v. United States, 4 Wall. 617;

Beaman v. United States, 19 Ct. Clms. 5;
United States v. Langston, 118 U. S. 389;
Sawyer v. United States, 22 Ct. Clms. 326;
Mathews v. United States, 22 Ct. Clms. 330;
People v. Henshaw, 76 Cal. 436;

Wyman v. United States, 26 Ct. Clms. 103.

It is supposed that the principle of these decisions does not apply in this case, because the office of "Deputy Public Printer" was created merely by an appropriation act, in which act the proper word, "hereafter" was not used, and that, therefore, the office of "Chief Clerk," being created by a general statute, was merely temporarily suspended, and, when reinserted in the appropriation act of March 4, 1911, was revived with all the functions attached to it by the act of January 12, 1895. It is probably true that a mere failure to appropriate money to carry out certain general objects, which have been provided for by statute, will not have any permanent effect upon those objects; and, as the Government can only act through officers and agents, an office, created by general laws to carry out certain objects of legislation, is only less important than those objects themselves. Therefore, where certain definite ends are

proposed by statute, as in the act of January 12, 1895, and an organization of officers is provided to carry those ends into effect, it is probable that no mere failure to appropriate money for the salaries of these offices could permanently affect their legal status. In that case the office is not "suspended." There will probably be no person filling it, in the absence of a provision for a salary, but the office itself still exists. But when in addition to the failure to appropriate for the office, the legislature transfers all its functions to another office, attaching to the latter the same qualifications theretofore required of the former, then, I conceive, the substituted office takes its place in the scheme of organization, and becomes one of the statutory means to effect the end proposed by law, and the former office is not "suspended"; it is abolished. After all, an office is nothing, in law, apart from its functions, duties, and emoluments and, if the latter be taken away, the office must, necessarily, cease to exist.

It is true that the act of February 26, 1907, did not in prescribing the qualifications and duties of the Deputy Public Printer use the word "hereafter" and that this is the word usually employed by Congress when the intention is to accomplish some permanent end. Congress may, however, express this intention, permanently to albolish one office and substitute another therefor, by any apt words, as some of the cases cited above clearly show, and I think the language of the act of 1907 quoted above, viz, "The office of Deputy Public Printer shall be filled by the selection and appointment by the Public Printer of a person skilled as a practical printer and versed in the art of bookbinding, and who shall perform the duties heretofore required of the chief clerk," sufficiently indicates such an intention on the part of Congress.

The question next arises as to the effect intended by the act of March 4, 1911, in again providing for a "chief clerk," along with a "Deputy Public Printer." In my judgment the only effect intended by this legislation was to create an office with the ordinary duties of a chief clerk in the Government Printing Office, as distinguished from the extraordinary duties cast upon that official by the act

of January 12, 1895, and to leave these extraordinary duties, together with the supervision of the buildings occupied by the Government Printing Office, to the office of "Deputy Public Printer." It is too well settled to need the citation of any authorities that the act of March 4, 1911, must be construed as a whole, and in the light of prior legislation and existing conditions, so as to give effect to every part of it, if possible, and to produce, if the language of the act permit, a consistent, harmonious scheme of organization of the Government Printing Office.

At the time the act of March 4, 1911, was passed there existed in the Government Printing Office, under prior legislation, and, in fact, a Deputy Public Printer whose salary was $4,500, who was required to have technical qualifications and who performed, by authority of the act of 1907, all the duties of the chief clerk, including those provided for in sections 20 and 36 of the act of January 12, 1895, and a secretary to the Public Printer, whose salary was $2,500. Into this scheme of organization the act of March 4, 1911, inserted a "chief clerk" in the place of the "secretary to the Public Printer," prescribing no especial qualifications or duties to the office of chief clerk, giving the office no greater emoluments than had previously been given to the "secretary to the Public Printer," and leaving the office of "Deputy Public Printer" untouched, except so far as it is impliedly affected by the creation of the office of "chief clerk." If this legislation is to be given its full effect, as it should be, the result will be that the office of chief clerk will have attached to it only those functions which naturally inhere in that office, as such, and that the office of Deputy Public Printer will have taken from it only those ordinary functions appertaining to the office of chief clerk, and will be left with the extraordinary functions conferred by sections 20 and 36 of the act of January 12, 1895, upon the chief clerk and by the act of 1907 expressly devolved upon the Deputy Public Printer. It is significant that the qualifications essential to the proper performance of the duties prescribed by those sections are no longer required of the chief clerk, but are required of the Deputy Public Printer, and that fact, together with the amount of

salary provided for the respective offices and the names given to them, are proper matters for consideration in determining the intention of Congress. These support, to its full extent, the conclusion reached above.

Case of the Masters' Clerks, 1 Phill. Ch. 650.

I am, therefore, of the opinion, considering the various acts of Congress above referred to in connection with each other, that the Deputy Public Printer is the proper person to perform the duties and exercise the powers prescribed by sections 20 and 36 of the act of January 12, 1895, and that the chief clerk is confined to those duties and which ordinarily belong to that office, as such.

Respectfully,

powers

The PRESIDENT.

GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM.

CORPORATION TAX-RETURNS-COMPROMISE OF

PENALTIES.

Every corporation subject to the tax under the corporation-tax act of August 5, 1909 (36 Stat. 114), must make returns whether or not its net income is large enough to make it liable for any amount of that tax. For a mere failure to make such returns in time, in the case of corporations with incomes so limited as not to be liable to the payment of any tax, liberal compromise is a course required by the spirit and policy of the laws of the United States.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

August 7, 1911.

SIR: The Attorney General referred to me your request of the 1st instant for an opinion on the question of returns to be made by corporations under the corporation-tax law of 1909. (36 Stat. 112.) He has submitted in that connection the letter to you of July 31, 1911, by the Hon. F. S. Jackson, of Kansas, and also the letter to himself by Mr. Jackson of July 24, 1911. In his letter to the Attorney General, Mr. Jackson states his views at length and I have given them careful consideration. He presents two propositions, which he states as follows, viz:

"(1) That the plain and practical construction of the law is that corporations exempt from tax under this law on account of having a net income of less than $5,000 are not

« AnteriorContinuar »