recognizing that the 26 purpose of separating the powers of each branch is “to preclude a commingling of these 27 essentially different powers of the government in the same hands”
How later courts described this case
- recognizing that the 26 purpose of separating the powers of each branch is “to preclude a commingling of these 27 essentially different powers of the government in the same hands”
- opining that interpretation of debt limitation provision “constantly [must] be adapted to new questions and conditions which arise because of an ever-expanding economy and the progress of society”
- “It seems to us that if ... the language used in the Toll-Bridge Act created a separate entity which might be considered as an instrumentality of, but not the State in its corporate sovereign capacity, it must follow that the Legislature, by the use of almost identical language in the State Office Building Act, created the same kind of creature”
- “[T]he powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*170 Concurring Opinion
Emmert, C. J.
I concur in the majority opinion except as to the ineligibility of the members of the General Assembly to be members of the Commission. Once we hold, as I believe we must, that the State Office Building Commission is a corporate entity separate from the State in its sovereign corporate capacity, it logically follows that the Commission is not a Department of the State of Indiana. Therefore, §60-2102, Burns’ 1951 Replacement (Supp.), does not violate Art. 3, §1, Art. 4, §1, or Art. 5, §1 of the Constitution providing for the separation of the powers of government. The members of the Commission are not exercising any functions of the Executive Department, for that is a Department of the State in its separate sovereign capacity. The fact that the Commission is an instrumentality of the State does not make it the State any more than the Indiana State Toll-Bridge Commission or the Indiana Toll Road Commission are Departments of the State. Under the issues presented and considered, I believe the Act is legal and constitutional in its entirety.
Note.—Reported in 149 N. E. 2d 273 .