In Re Burke

THE COURT.

—The petitioner asks for his discharge on

habeas corpus

from an imprisonment under a charge of a violation of the Wright Act, so called, being an act of the legislature submitted to a referendum at the last election and carried by the people. His principal point is that the act is void because it purports to enact into the law in this state all the penal provisions of the so-called Volstead Act, being an act of Congress passed pursuant to the eighteenth amendment of the federal constitution, and to enforce its provisions.

The question whether a state may enact a law in that manner is not a new one in the jurisprudence of the United States. Wherever there is no constitutional provision which forbids it, it is proper to declare that any law of the United States, or of another state, shall be the law of this state. We find no constitutional provision in this state which forbids such action. That portion of section 24 of article IV of the constitution which reads as follows, to wit: “No law shall be revised or amended by reference to its title; but in such case the act revised or section amended shall be re-enacted and published at length as revised or amended, ’ ’ does not prohibit that mode of legislation. It refers only to the revision or amendment of some law already enacted by our state legislature, and has no reference to the enactment of a new provision. The principle that laws may be enacted in that fashion is well established. In

People

v.

Whipple,

47 Cal. 592, it was held that it was proper for the legislature in creating an office to define the duties of the incumbent by reference to an existing

[328]

statute, and to provide that those duties shall be the same as those required by the act referred to. The principle is that such legislation may consist in readopting by its title the provisions of another act adopted by another state, or by the United States. In

Ex parte

Lemon, 143 Cal. 558 [65 L. R. A. 946,