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office of the United States Supreme Court,
with a tenure of four years?
DELEGATE JOHNSON: I believe that
is so, but I was under the impression we
were writing a state constitution.
DELEGATE SCHNEIDER: I think you
are correct there. This information is sup-
plied by Delegate Burgess, who is rated
number one commissioner in the State of
Maryland, and is on our delegation from
Prince George's County.
DELEGATE JOHNSON: I congratulate
him.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there further
questions of the minority spokesman?
(There was no response.)
Any further questions?
(There was no response.)
If not, while he returns to his desk I will
ask the clerk to read the amendment.
I will ask the chief page to distribute the
amendment. It will be Amendment No. 1.
Do you have the amendment?
The Clerk will read the amendment.
READING CLERK: Amendment No. 1,
to accompany Minority Report No. JB-1 to
Committee Recommendation JB-1, by Dele-
gates Johnson, Harkness, Hickman, Kahl,
Murphy, Siewierski, and Rush: On page 1
in line 11 of Section 5.01 Judicial Power
strike out the word "exclusively"; and in
line 14 after the word "Court" add the
following: "and other courts that may be
provided by law."
THE CHAIRMAN: Is the amendment
seconded?
(Whereupon, the amendment was duly
seconded.)
THE CHAIRMAN: The amendment
having been moved and seconded, the Chair
recognizes Delegate Johnson.
This is a period of controlled debate, fif-
teen minutes to Delegate Johnson, fifteen
minutes to Delegate Mudd.
Delegate Johnson, you may speak to the
amendment.
DELEGATE JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman,
may I say at the outset as we indicated to
Chairman Powers of the Calendar Commit-
tee that the minority of the committee will
probably not need all of our controlled
time. Quite frankly, I did not think we
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would reach the judicial article. I am
pleased we did reach it so early, but I did
not believe we would reach it so early, and
I did not have either the desire or the
inclination to collar other delegates to speak
on this amendment. Certainly there are
members of the minority who will speak to
certain specific amendments, but they do
not desire to speak to each and every
amendment for the benefit of the Commit-
tee of the Whole.
THE CHAIRMAN: May the Chair say
that you are not only not compelled to use
the entire time allotted to you, but we will
be delighted if you do not.
DELEGATE JOHNSON: I believe that
the remarks that I made to the questions,
made the issue very clear with respect to
Amendment No. 1 to section 5.01. If it is
in order, Mr. Chairman, I will allot three
minutes to Delegate Siewierski.
DELEGATE SIEWIERSKI: I will give
you that privilege. You mean to allot it
immediately?
DELEGATE JOHNSON: To speak to
it, yes. I believe I have said about all I can
say on that particular section.
Delegate Siewierski.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Siewierski
is recognized for three minutes.
DELEGATE SIEWIERSKI: Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, fellow delegates, we are
confronted with a significant issue. Many
people follow some type of procedure in
trying to reach a conclusion. The first step
is, they usually vote for those with some
authority; secondly, they vote for the ex-
perience of others, and thirdly, they delib-
erate within themselves.
Our request is that you follow this pro-
cedure in deciding a question of the re-
strictiveness of the judicial power for the
court or for the State of Maryland.
I would like you to consider the model
state constitution of the National Munici-
pal League as an authority, or at least a
guide on the matter of constitutional draft-
ing. This model recommends that the sec-
tion on judicial power include some flexi-
bility by the statement, "such courts of
limited jurisdiction as may be provided by
law."
Now, granted it does state limited juris-
diction, it does provide flexibility.
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