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City of Enid7/5/2005
eneral nature shall have uniform operation throughout the State, and where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted.
Okla. Const. Art. 5 § 59.
It states in Article 5, § 46, that the Legislature may not create a local or special law authorizing activities that are listed therein.
II. The Origins of Article 5 §§ 32, 46 and 59.
A former Chief Justice of this Court notes the origin of Art. 5 § 46. R. L. Williams, The Constitution of Oklahoma and Enabling Act: Annotated With References to the Constitution, Statutes and Decisions, Art. 5 § 46 (2nd ed. 1941). He notes that § 46 was derived from a federal statute that applied to Oklahoma Territory. Id., citing, Guthrie Daily Leader v. Cameron, 1895 OK 71, 41 P. 635. That same statute was explained by the United States Supreme Court:
That act [Act of July 30, 1886, c. 818, § 1, 24 Stat. 170], among other things, provides that, where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted in any of the territories of the United States by the territorial legislatures thereof; and it also provides that the territorial legislatures shall not pass local or special laws in any of the cases therein enumerated, among which is a law to regulate the practice in courts of justice. Both of these provisions are said to have been violated in the passage of the act in question.
Guthrie Nat. Bank v. City of Guthrie, 173 U.S. 528, 533, 19 S.Ct. 513, 43 L.Ed. 796 (1899), (citation and emphasis added).
The Act of July 30, 1886, c. 818, 24 Stat. 170, contains seven sections on various topics with § 1 of that Act devoted to prohibiting territorial legislatures from enacting special or local laws. Section 1 of the Act contained the language subsequently enacted in both § 46 and § 59 of our Constitution.
An old rule of statutory construction states that "Where the same word or phrase is used in different parts of a statute, it will be presumed to be used in the same sense throughout; and where its meaning in one instance is clear, this meaning will be attached to it elsewhere, unless it clearly appears from the whole statute that it was the intention of the Legislature to use it in a different sense." Walton v. Donnelly, 1921 OK 258, 201 P. 367, 370. The Framers of our Constitution knew this rule and knew that a "special law" in the federal statute did not have different definitions in the same section of that statute when they used it to create § 46 and § 59.
The federal statute was created in 1886, and reflected reaction against prior legislative abuses of power in creating rights or privileges for less than everyone in the population. Relating to municipalities, in 1893 one author explained that state legislatures "have more and more interfered in matters relating exclusively to subdivisions of the state, - often against the express desire of these subdivisions." Amasa M. Eaton, Recent State Constitutions, 6 Harv L Rev 109, 122 (1892). Prohibiting local or special laws was popular in new and amended state constitutions during this era.
States that prohibited all special and local laws discovered that some special and local laws were needed, and some states then created constitutional provisions to allow enactment of special and local laws if pre-enactment notice were given by the legislature that it intended to enact such laws. James Q. Dealy, Growth of American State Constitutions: From 1776 to the End of the Year 1914, 225-226 (1915), (reprint 1972). The Oklahoma Constitution provides this procedure in Art. 5 § 32. But with this power to enact special and local laws upon notice to the people, the people withdr
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