Section
59
Local
and special legislation.
The
General Assembly shall not pass local or special acts concerning any of the following
subjects, or for any of the following purposes, namely:
First: To regulate the jurisdiction, or the practice, or the circuits of
the courts of justice, or the rights, powers, duties or compensation of the officers
thereof; but the practice in circuit courts in continuous session may, by a general law,
be made different from the practice of circuit courts held in terms.
Second: To regulate the summoning, impaneling or compensation of grand or
petit jurors.
Third: To provide for changes of venue in civil or criminal causes.
Fourth: To regulate the punishment of crimes and misdemeanors, or to
remit fines, penalties or forfeitures.
Fifth: To regulate the limitation of civil or criminal causes.
Sixth: To affect the estate of cestuis que trust, decedents, infants or
other persons under disabilities, or to authorize any such persons to sell, lease,
encumber or dispose of their property.
Seventh: To declare any person of age, or to relieve an infant or feme
covert of disability, or to enable him to do acts allowed only to adults not under
disabilities.
Eighth: To change the law of descent, distribution or succession.
Ninth: To authorize the adoption or legitimation of children.
Tenth: To grant divorces.
Eleventh: To change the names of persons.
Twelfth: To give effect to invalid deeds, wills or other instruments.
Thirteenth: To legalize, except as against the Commonwealth, the
unauthorized or invalid act of any officer or public agent of the Commonwealth, or of any
city, county or municipality thereof.
Fourteenth: To refund money legally paid into the State Treasury.
Fifteenth: To authorize or to regulate the levy, the assessment or the
collection of taxes, or to give any indulgence or discharge to any assessor or collector
of taxes, or to his sureties.
Sixteenth: To authorize the opening, altering, maintaining or vacating of
roads, highways, streets, alleys, town plats, cemeteries, graveyards, or public grounds
not owned by the Commonwealth.
Seventeenth: To grant a charter to any corporation, or to amend the
charter of any existing corporation; to license companies or persons to own or operate
ferries, bridges, roads or turnpikes; to declare streams navigable, or to authorize the
construction of booms or dams therein, or to remove obstructions therefrom; to affect toll
gates or to regulate tolls; to regulate fencing or the running at large of stock.
Eighteenth: To create, increase or decrease fees, percentages or
allowances to public officers, or to extend the time for the collection thereof, or to
authorize officers to appoint deputies.
Nineteenth: To give any person or corporation the right to lay a railroad
track or tramway, or to amend existing charters for such purposes.
Twentieth: To provide for conducting elections, or for designating the
places of voting, or changing the boundaries of wards, precincts or districts, except when
new counties may be created.
Twenty-first: To regulate the rate of interest.
Twenty-second: To authorize the creation, extension, enforcement,
impairment or release of liens.
Twenty-third: To provide for the protection of game and fish.
Twenty-fourth: To regulate labor, trade, mining or manufacturing.
Twenty-fifth: To provide for the management of common schools.
Twenty-sixth: To locate or change a county seat.
Twenty-seventh: To provide a means of taking the sense of the people of
any city, town, district, precinct or county, whether they wish to authorize, regulate or
prohibit therein the sale of vinous, spirituous or malt liquors, or alter the liquor laws.
Twenty-eighth: Restoring to citizenship persons convicted of infamous
crimes.
Twenty-ninth:
In all other cases where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be
enacted
Text as
Ratified on: August 3, 1891, and revised September 28, 1891.
History: Not yet amended.
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