Commonwealth Ex Rel. Fox v. Swing

Dissenting Opinion by

Mr. Justice Cohen:

By tbe majority’s bolding, it is now established that by Article XII, §2 of tbe Constitution “Tbe General Assembly may by law declare what offices are incompatible” tbe courts of tbis Commonwealth are deprived of their common-law jurisdiction to determine questions of incompatibility. I cannot conceive that as tbe import of tbe constitutional provision. Surely, it was not tbe intention of tbe Constitutional Convention to deprive tbe courts of their common-law jurisdiction.

Tbe problem of plural office bolding is not new. In England as early as in tbe…