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to amend the constitution recently to pro-
vide a provision for child support, which is
similar to the provision here in section 13?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Scanlan.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: I believe that
was done.
DELEGATE MACDONALD: If it was
necessary to amend the Constitution to al-
low a father to be imprisoned for non-
support of a child, why is it not necessary
now?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Scanlan.
It seems to the Chair, Delegate Macdon-
ald, you are talking about the converse, if
I followed your question.
Delegate Scanlan, I did not mean to
interrupt.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: The Chair ex-
pressed my own bewilderment, there. I
thought he was going in circles, too.
DELEGATE MACDONALD: My ques-
tion is this: If it was necessary to have
the provision in the Constitution previously
so that the father who failed to support his
children could be held in contempt of
court, and in effect imprisoned for that par-
ticular debt, why it is not necessary today?
DELEGATE SCANLAN: If the Con-
stitution has a provision preventing im-
prisonment for debt, problems are raised
as to exactly what that means.
As I understand the Majority Report,
they concede in their report that the Gen-
eral Assembly has absolute power to pro-
hibit this sort of thing, and that even if
the General Assembly took no action the
common law would prevail.
The cases of which you speak are tra-
ditional. It is imprisonment for failure to
obey a court order. I see no reason for
retaining this provision in the Constitution.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Macdonald,
I could give you perhaps a more direct
answer.
Section 38 of Article III of the present
Constitution, in the first clause says: "No
person shall be imprisoned for debt."
It was because of that provision that
the amendment of which you speak was
necessary. If that had not been in the Con-
stitution the amendment would not have
been necessary. If this section 13 is omitted,
this Constitution will not have any similar
provision that a person shall not be im-
prisoned for debt.
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Does that answer your inquiry, Delegate
Macdonald?
DELEGATE MACDONALD: Not com-
pletely, Mr. Chairman.
I may be in error, but it has always been
my impression that the provision now in
section 38, Article III to which you have
referred, namely, that no person shall be
imprisoned for debt, was simply declara-
tory of the common law, and even if we
did not have that section in our Constitu-
tion today, that prohibition would remain,
and it was necessary to include a provision
in the Constitution to take care of the
child support provision. I could be in error.
That is my impression.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think you are. The
amendment was made to section 3.8 be-
cause of the first clause, because of the way
section 3.8 read before the amendment.
In other words the provision or the
amendment as to imprisonment for non-
support of children, was an amendment of
section 3.8 of Article III.
DELEGATE MACDONALD: I under-
stand that fully, Mr. Chairman, but if we
had no section 3.8 of Article III of the
Constitution today, and the matter was
completely silent as far as the Constitution
is concerned, I do not think a man could
be imprisoned in the State of Maryland for
debt.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate James.
DELEGATE JAMES: Mr. Chairman, I
think I know the legislative history of why
the General Assembly amended the law by
way of constitutional amendment.
My recollection is that problems used to
occur where separation agreements under
which husbands would agree to support
wives and children were embodied in
decrees.
The courts ruled that the court could
not enforce these decrees because this was
a contract, even though embodied in a
decree. Therefore you were putting a man
in jail for failure to pay his debt. So that
in order to clarify the situation and make it
clear the obligation to support the wife and
children was not a debt within the concept
of the constitutional protection, this lan-
guage was adopted to clarify that point. I
believe it was by amendment back in 1950.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Willoner.
DELEGATE WILLONER: Mr. Chair-
man, as one member of the committee, and
I remember committee discussions on this,
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