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22 Minn. 53

Everett v. Smith

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Decided July 10, 1875

Supreme Court of Minnesota · decided 1875-07-10

Pursuant to an act of the legislature, the question of the removal of the county seat of Le Sueur county from the town of Le Sueur to the village of Cleveland was submitted to the vote of the electors of the county, at the general election held November 3, 1874.

Relies on Taylor v. Taylor · Bayard v. Klinge

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-07-10

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently September 1948

19 state decisions

5018751880189019001910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Berry, J.

¶1Section 1, art. 11, of the constitution of this state declares that “all laws for removing county seats shall, before taking effect, be submitted to the electors of the county or counties to be affected thereby, at the next general election after the passage thereof, and be adopted by a majority of such electors.” The only question in this case is, what is meant by the words, “ a majority of such electors ? ”

¶2In Taylor v. Taylor, 10 Minn. 107, the same question was presented, and deliberately considered by this court, by which it was distinctly determined that the words, “a. majority of such electors,” as used in the provision of the constitution, mean a majority of the electors voting at the election. This was a construction of the language of the constitution, irrespective of the particular facts appearing in the *55case as to registry lists. The case of Taylor v. Taylorwas followed, and the same construction given to this constitutional provision, in Bayard v. Klinge, 16 Minn. 249. So far as the question under consideration is concerned, the case at bar cannot be distinguished from the cases cited. The question must be regarded as settled in this court. If there are constitutional provisions as to which a court would refuse to be bound by previous constructions, conflicting with its own views of correct construction, the provision involved in this case is not one of them.

¶3Order reversed.

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