However, a recovery in quasi-contract will be denied if to permit it will result in destroying the effect of limitations placed upon the powers of a municipal corporation to protect the taxpayers from what is popularly known as "graft." In McDonald v. Mayor of New York (17) the charter of the city required contracts for the purchase of supplies above a certain amount to be let to the lowest bidder-obviously to protect the public from the payment of exorbitant prices. The plaintiff furnished supplies to the city in virtue of an agreement not made in accordance with the charter provision. He could not, of course, recover on the contract, as that was clearly void; but sought to reach the same result by relying on the fact that the city had had and used the supplies, and should pay for them, at least, their reasonable value. A recovery was denied, the court saying that all who dealt with the city must at their peril ascertain the limitations contained in the city charter, and that to permit any recovery at all would nullify the limitation in question. PUBLIC OFFICERS BY PERCY BORDWELL, B. L. (University of California) Professor of Law, Universty of Missouri. INTRODUCTION. § 1. Administrative Law. Administrative Law in its broad signification includes the great mass of public or governmental law not included in international or constitutional law or the penal codes. It is readily distinguishable from international law, and, although many of its rules have penal sanctions, it is not likely to be confused with the fairly well defined body of rules intended to pro tect persons and property included in the penal codes. The line of separation from constitutional law, however, is less marked and indeed it may be said that most of the constitutional law that finds its way into the courts except such as concerns the division of powers between the state and Federal governments is likely to be treated under Administrative Law. But, although their fields overlap, there is much that is not common to them. Constitutional law deals with the organization of the state in its most solemn form as a constitution-making body, organizes and determines the functions of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, divides fundamental powers between the state and Federal governments, and enumerates fundamental private rights. Administrative law organizes the central administration and the organs of local government, specifies in detail the rights and duties of the great army of governmental employes all over the country, deals with the methods of administrative action and control, and finally provides remedies against the government and its officials for the violation of private rights. This is an immense field. It includes most of the law on the statute books, the law of taxation, sanitary and quarantine legislation, highway, railway, postal and telegraph legislation, the poor laws, the school laws, in fact laws on all the widely varied subjects of governmental activity. It is clear that this is a great branch of the law, rivaling, if not exceeding in extent, the private law as to persons and property, the consideration of which takes so much of the time of the courts. It would be matter for an encyclopedia, not for a single treatise. Accordingly in single treatises on administrative law the treatment of the subject has been much narrowed. § 2. Ordinary treatment of subject. The idea of writers of single treatises on administrative law has been to give at a glance a picture of the vast machinery of government administration in its working operation. Other than taking a sweeping glance at the directions of governmental activity, with their varied functions and methods of action, they have confined themselves to the organization of the central administration and of local government; to the commencement and termination of the official relation, with the more general rights and duties of officers; to a cursory examination of the methods of administrative action; and finally to a more detailed examination of the methods of control over the administration. § 3. Treatment in this work. But even much of what is given in these single treatises, although helpful in giving an adequate idea of the working of the administration as a whole, belongs rather to the pages of a work on civil government than to a general treatment dealing with the law of the courts. Accordingly, the organization of the central administration and of local governments, the legislative control over the administration, and the varied lines of government activity will not be considered here. What remains may be conveniently classified under the head of Public Officers and of Extraordinary Remedies, and will be treated in this article and the one following. CHAPTER I. NATURE OF PUBLIC OFFICE. ELIGIBILITY. SECTION 1. NATURE OF PUBLIC OFFICE. § 4. Not contractual. The official relation is not based on contract and therefore a state officer holding an office for a term of years is not protected in the continuance of his office or its emoluments by the clause of the United States Constitution which declares that "no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts." Thus in Butler v. Pennsylvania (1) a statute of Pennsylvania had provided that canal commissioners be appointed annually at a compensation of four dollars a day, but before Butler's year had expired a second statute was passed fixing the termination of the office at an earlier date and lowering the compensation for the shortened term to three dollars per day. This was claimed by Butler to violate the above clause of the Federal Constitution, but the Supreme Court of the United States held that while the promised compensation for services already rendered might be rightly claimed, a right to continue services no longer desired would be detrimental to progress and the public good, and that, if the legislature could change the duties of the office alone and not the salaries as well, "the government would have to become one great pension establishment on which to quarter a host of (1) 10 Howard, 402. |