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SALEM, Ore. — The Oregon Legislature may have an unusual request for voters in the next general election that harkens back to that fateful summer day in 1804 when a bitter rivalry between U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and the nation’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, was settled with a fatal gunshot.
Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialize, voters would see a question on their general-election ballots asking if a 172-year-old ban on dueling by public officials — as in, the old-fashioned way of resolving fights — should be erased from the Oregon Constitution.
The constitutional ban in question is Article II, Section 9, which says anyone who offers, accepts, knowingly participates in a “challenge to fight a duel … or who shall agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall be ineligible to any office of trust, or profit.” (this is exact language from the constitution)
The article was signed into law just 30 minutes after its drafting by the second provisional legislature in 1845, almost 15 years before Oregon’s statehood, when squabbles were still often resolved by duel even decades after Hamilton’s death on the opposite side of the country.
“They decided that it would not be very civil if two members of the Legislature disagreed and then shot each other on the front steps of the provisional capitol,” Republican Sen. Brian Boquist said Wednesday during the proposal’s first committee hearing.
Today though, says Boquist, chief sponsor of the proposal, it’s an archaic rule that’s unnecessary for obvious reasons in modern times.
But, like any change to the constitution, repealing it must be approved by Oregon voters.
http://q13fox.com/2017/04/08/oregon-voters-may-get-chance-to-reverse-172-year-old-ban-on-duels/
Should ongoing discussions in Salem materialize, voters would see a question on their general-election ballots asking if a 172-year-old ban on dueling by public officials — as in, the old-fashioned way of resolving fights — should be erased from the Oregon Constitution.
The constitutional ban in question is Article II, Section 9, which says anyone who offers, accepts, knowingly participates in a “challenge to fight a duel … or who shall agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall be ineligible to any office of trust, or profit.” (this is exact language from the constitution)
The article was signed into law just 30 minutes after its drafting by the second provisional legislature in 1845, almost 15 years before Oregon’s statehood, when squabbles were still often resolved by duel even decades after Hamilton’s death on the opposite side of the country.
“They decided that it would not be very civil if two members of the Legislature disagreed and then shot each other on the front steps of the provisional capitol,” Republican Sen. Brian Boquist said Wednesday during the proposal’s first committee hearing.
Today though, says Boquist, chief sponsor of the proposal, it’s an archaic rule that’s unnecessary for obvious reasons in modern times.
But, like any change to the constitution, repealing it must be approved by Oregon voters.
http://q13fox.com/2017/04/08/oregon-voters-may-get-chance-to-reverse-172-year-old-ban-on-duels/
