these cases the court did not find, or the
courts have not found that they could
mandamus the legislature to act in such
an area?
DELEGATE BOYER: In such an area,
are you talking about other vital natural
resources or reapportionment?
DELEGATE HANSON: Let me ask the
question more broadly. Has your Commit-
tee come upon any instance in which a
state court has mandamused a state legis-
lature to do anything?
DELEGATE BOYER: We did not re-
search that legal question of whether any
state court has ever mandamused any state
legislature to do anything. I do not know.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Pullen.
DELEGATE PULLEN: Mr. Chairman,
do these legalistic questions mean that the
legislature does not have to do anything
that the constitution directs, that it is above
the constitution?
I think this is a very broad implication,
and it disturbs me.
DELEGATE BOYER: Yes, sir.
As you know, in some of the sections that
we passed previous to this we said that the
General Assembly might do thus and so.
This provision, however, is very mandatory,
Dr. Pullen, and says "the General Assembly
shall," and it is our intention that the Gen-
eral Assembly shall, without any hanky-
panky about it.
It is our intention that if the General
Assembly should tailor neglect to manda-
torily and positively, affirmatively act, then
there will be recourse to judicial interpre-
tation.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Pullen.
DELEGATE PULLEN: To carry that
a little further, Mr. Chairman, suppose the
constitution requires judiciary reform and
the legislature fails to carry that out?
Then where do you go?
DELEGATE BOYER: Dr. Pullen, my
only answer would be the same as I have
given. As in any instance where there is
non-conformance or mal-conformance on
the part of any branch of government, be
it legislative or executive, the courts are
the ultimate resort upon which you can
rely to compel such action.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Pullen, if
the Chair might make an observation, I
think there are certain matters that the |
three coordinated branches of government
cannot be compelled to do or not to do by
another coordinate branch of government
and the ultimate power in that is the power
of the ballot.
Delegate Mentzer.
DELEGATE MENTZER: Mr. Chair-
man, I believe you said that Hawaii was
one of the states which had such a clause,
and I understand that one result is that
they have no billboards on the countryside
in Hawaii. Much as I might be in sympathy
with this for Maryland, are we not inviting
trouble if we have suits saying that the
legislation to control billboards did not go
far enough? This particular instance of
billboards, was discussed by your Commit-
tee?
DELEGATE BOYER. No. the matter of
billboards is very interesting. As 1 under-
stand it, in Hawaii a group of interested
citizens went out with their own time and
money and purchased all the billboard
signs that were on the landscape of Hawaii.
When they finally bought the last block of
billboards, they then approached the Gen-
eral Assembly, or the constitutional conven-
tion out there, and had built into the con-
stitution the prohibition against any fur-
ther billboards; but this was done as a civic
duty by an interested civic group to trigger
and initiate the prohibition of billboards.
We did not consider billboards per se in
our Committee, but certainly I think Mrs.
Lyndon Johnson, as part of her beautifica-
tion program probably the prohibition
against billboards in the interests of con-
servation as part of scenic beauty.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Bennett
DELEGATE BENNETT: Delegate
Boyer, did your Committee give any con-
sideration to putting at least part of this
in the positive and restricting the legisla-
ture from selling any public lands or uti-
lizing any public lands dedicated for park
purposes for anything else other than it
was originally used for?
DELEGATE BOYER: No, sir, we did
not consider that.
DELEGATE BENNETT: That would
be feasible, would it not, and at least pre-
serve what we have?
DELEGATE BOYER: I imagine any-
thing is feasible, Delegate Bennett. We just
thought that the best protection that we
could give the citizens of the State in re-
sponse to the many intensely interested wit-
nesses who came down, to testify, would be |
