Ex parte Higashi

17 Haw. 428, 1906 Haw. LEXIS 67
CourtHawaii Supreme Court
DecidedApril 6, 1906
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 17 Haw. 428 (Ex parte Higashi) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Hawaii Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ex parte Higashi, 17 Haw. 428, 1906 Haw. LEXIS 67 (haw 1906).

Opinions

OPINION OF THE COURT BY

HARTWELL, J.

Tbe appellee, who was a petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus, claims that the chief justice is disqualified because he [429]*429expressed to a member of the judiciary committee of the legislature his approval of the bill which became Act 59, Laws of 1905, it being material to decide whether the act, in providing that no person upon conviction of a misdemeanor shall be imprisoned in Oahu prison or subjected to any infamous punishment, amends Sec. 3179, R. L., authorizing imprisonment at hard labor not exceeding one year. It is claimed that approval of the bill is like the former relation of attorney and client, which, as held in the Notley will case, ante, p. 393, is not a disqualification, but the petitioner was allowed to argue that the decision was wrong. It is urged that the court having for many years construed the article in the Constitution which enumerates causes of disqualification as not exclusive of the case of a judge who had been of counsel, Congress intended that this construction should be placed upon the same provision in the Organic Act. It is further contended that the common law, which does not disqualify a judge except for pecuniary interest,* is not law in Hawaii because contrary to Hawaiian judicial precedents; and that as absence of bias is essential to judicial impartiality its presence disqualifies a judge from performing judicial functions; that the enumerated causes of disqualification by pecuniary interest, relationship and former judgment are founded on bias, but do not include all instances, and.that the law ought to be so construed as to secure the object intended.

It is obvious that if the alleged disqualification is based upon a principle of law — that bias per se disqualifies — it is immaterial from what circumstances it arises or what construction has been placed upon constitutional provisions.

The petitioner cites the Mankichi case, 190 U. S. 197, and Carter v. Gear, 197 U. S. 348, as authority that “in interpreting a statute * * * the intention of the law making power will prevail, even against the letter of the statute.” As the Joint Resolution of Annexation contained no express provision for extending the Constitution of the Hnited States to Hawaii or declaring that no Hawaiian laws inconsistent with the Constitution should remain in force, the court declined to read into the resolution such unexpressed provision. In the other case [430]*430the court found in Sec. 81 of the Organic Act “authority for a recognition of the laws previously existing in Hawaii concerning the constitution of its court and their method of procedure.” The cases do not support the appellee’s contention. A law which is clear and unambiguous and the application of which in its literal terms results in no peculiar hardship or in absurdity, requires no construction or interpretation. All that the court can do in such cases is to declare the law to be as it is without undertaking to modify its terms.

The substance of the contention is (1) that the Organic Act, in naming certain causes which disqualify a judge, does not name all of them; (2) that the requirement of the Organic Act that the supreme court shall consist of a chief justice and two associate justices, with the proviso that the place of an absent ■or disqualified justice may be filled as provided by law, namely, by a circuit judge, does not refer solely to disqualifications named in the act, but to such other causes of disqualification as the court may deem to be sufficient; (3) that the uniform decisions of this court that a judge is disqualified who has been of counsel in the case must be treated as if the disqualification were expressly declared in the Organic Act, and (4) that bias,* being generally a cause of disqualification by constitutional or statutory provisions in. the several states, can, in the absence of such provisions in the Organic Act or constitutions of Hawaii, be regarded by this court as a sufficient disqualification. We see no sufficient reason to sustain the contention.

To hold that bias is a cause of disqualification, under certain ■circumstances, would require the same ruling under all circumstances and whether the bias would be likely to influence the judgment or not. This would be judicial legislation. The fact that bias, existing in various specified relations, or generally, has elsewhere been made the subject of legislation, indicates that legislation was considered to be necessary. We hold that the chief justice is not disqualified.

This case is an appeal by the Territory from an order of the circuit judge, in a habeas corpus proceeding, discharging the petitioner who was imprisoned in Honolulu jail under a [431]*431sentence of thirty days’ imprisonment imposed by the district magistrate of Honolulu for the offense of “aiding and assisting in maintaining a lottery contrary to Section 3173 R. L.” The petition for the writ of habeas corpus alleges that this sentence of imprisonment without hard labor was unauthorized by law and the conviction by the magistrate was in violation of the third article of the Constitution providing that “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury,” and of the requirement of the fifth amendment that “no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury,” and of the sixth amendment that “in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.”

The petition further alleges that the petitioner was imprisoned by the high sheriff in “what is arbitrarily designated by law as Honolulu Jail, but which your petitioner avers is in fact a part of Oahu Jail, the latter being the Territorial penitentiary in which are confined all manner of felons convicted of infamous crimes under the laws of said Territory, including persons under sentence of death, that that portion of said penitentiary designated as Honolulu Jail is under the control of said High Sheriff, who is also the keeper or warden of said penitentiary, that the only means of ingress and egress to said Honolulu Jail so called, is through the gates, office and yard of said penitentiary, and that all persons confined in said Honolulu Jail so called, including your petitioner, are and must be imprisoned in said penitentiary before being confined in said Honolulu Jail so called, and are while so imprisoned in said penitentiary, photographed and registered upon the books • of said, penitentiary as inmates thereof, that is to say, there is entered upon the journal of said penitentiary, the sex, age, height, personal description of each prisoner thereafter confined in Honolulu Jail, so called, together with his last place of abode and place of nativity and the date of reception and discharge of each such prisoner, that all persons confined in said Honolulu Jail so called are numbered sequentially with felons [432]

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Bluebook (online)
17 Haw. 428, 1906 Haw. LEXIS 67, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-higashi-haw-1906.