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the Assembly , the said Bill shall be returned to the Assembly , and considered and recorded as a Law .” 12
The law did not address what happened when the Assembly disagreed with the proposals of amendment a second time .
Seven years later , the constitution was revised . As adopted in the 1786 Constitution , all bills
. . . shall be laid before the Governor and Council for their revision and concurrence , or proposals of amendment ; who shall return the same to the Assembly , with their proposals of amendment , if any , in writing ; and if the same are not agreed to by the Assembly , it shall be in the power of the Governor and Council to suspend the passing of such laws until the next session of the Legislature . Provided , that if the Governor and Council shall neglect or refuse to return any such bill to the Assembly , with written proposals of amendment , within five days , or before the rising of the Legislature , the same shall become law . 13
This was Section XVI of Chapter II . Printing was no longer required , and the Governor and Council could suspend the effective date of a bill for a year . When bills were not returned within five days or before the next session of the General Assembly , they became law by default .
In 1801 , the legislature passed a law revising the 1784 law , attempting to clarify Section XVI . When a bill passed and was sent to the Governor and Council , and returned to the House , with proposals of amendment or a conclusion not to concur , the legislature could pass the bill again . The bill would go back to the Governor and Council , for “ their revisal , concurrence or proposals of amendment ,” but the 1801 act explicitly prohibited the Governor and Council from returning the bill to the House a second time . 14
A bill entitled , “ An act , to repeal a part of an act therein mentioned ,” was passed by the House in 1825 , sent to the Governor and Council , and suspended for a year . It was not returned to the House in 1826 , which took up the measure on its own ( without the actual bill ) and concluded it was a law , without the concurrence of the Governor and Council . The Governor and Council regarded this as an “ assumption of power , unprecedented and unwarranted by the constitution . 15 A week later , the House passed its own resolution , concluding that the Constitution gave the House the right to pass suspended bills into law . This led the Governor and Council to direct their secretary to keep suspended bills in his possession , not to be returned without the express direction of the Governor and Council .
The system worked well , or at least without
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incident , until 1826 . The prior year , the Assembly has passed a bill repealing a part of the law relating to the jurisdiction of justices of the peace . 16 A justice could hear and decide trespass claims , but if the defendant answered with a plea of title to the land , jurisdiction would move to the county courts , where the defendant was compelled to “ take a trial on such plea of justification .” Passed in 1824 , repealed in 1825 , suspended , not returned , the repeal reenacted in 1826 , the act was treated as law by the House and printed with the laws of 1826 .
The 1835 Council of Censors agreed with the House . Although it could not “ impute any impure motives to either branch ,” the Council found the fault was with the lack of clarity , believing the dispute arose from “ different constructions of the inexplicit and doubtful language of the constitution , touching the powers of the two branches .” There was precedent as well . Vermont had 30 years of experience with the suspension clause since the adoption of the 1793 Constitution , and no Governor and Council had previously assumed to have a true veto over legislation . During these years , the framers of the Constitution or their contemporaries , who had served on the Governor and Council , had simply acquiesced to the superior power of the legislature to enact laws after suspension . 17
To address the problem , what is now Section 11 was adopted in 1836 , with a qualified veto , to be exercised at the discretion of the Governor acting alone . The Council of Censors explained , “ We have thought it inconsistent with the principles of a free government that the executive should have a negative on the proceedings of the Legislature ; nevertheless , as the executive have an opportunity of observing all difficulties which arise in the execution of laws and are the center of information upon that subject , we judge it necessary that the Legislature should be availed of such information . We therefore propose that all acts , before they pass into laws , shall be laid before the executive for revision . They are , however , to make no leading propositions , but simply to state their objections , if any they find , with their reasons , in writing , to the Legislature , who still are to have the sole power of passing laws .” 18
Section 11 of Chapter II of the Vermont Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention of 1836 . It provided ,
Sec . 11 . Every bill , which shall have passed the senate and house of representatives , shall , before it becomes a law , be presented to the governor ; if he approve , he shall sign it ; if not , he shall return it , with objections in writing , to the house in which it shall have originated ; which shall proceed to reconsider it . If , upon such reconsideration , a majority
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of the house pass the bill , it shall , together with the objections , be sent to the other house , by which it shall likewise be reconsidered , and if approved by a majority of that House , it shall become a law . But , in all such cases , the votes of both Houses shall be taken by yeas and nays , and the names of the persons voting for or against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House , respectively . If any bill shall not be returned by the Governor , as aforesaid , within five days ( Sundays excepted ) after it shall have been presented to him , the same shall become a law in like manner as if he had signed it ; unless the two houses , by their adjournment , within three days after the presentation of such bill shall prevent its return ; in which case it shall not become a law . 19
With the amendment , the steps necessary to complete the legislative process after a veto were clarified . A majority of each chamber would be necessary to override the veto . Laws would take effect with or without the Governor ’ s signature , depending on the time of arrival at his office . There would no longer be any question of how the process should work .
The Vetoes of the Nineteenth Century
Of the 35 vetoes from 1839 , ( when Governor Silas Jennison vetoed the act incorporating the Memphremagog Literary and Theological Seminary , because the bill didn ’ t contain any express provision authorizing a future legislature to alter or amend it ), to 1888 ( when Governor William P . Dillingham vetoed a bill relating to the powers of the State Board of Health and local boards of health , on the grounds that it purported to give the State Board the power to enact rules with the force and effect of law , raising concerns about delegation of legislative powers , and because it had not been given careful consideration by both branches ), there had been only two successful overrides . 20 One was Guy Sampson ’ s claim for compensation for what Governor William Slade had called a defective digested index to Vermont laws , which he vetoed in 1845 , and was promptly overridden by the Assembly . 21 The other was Governor Levi Fuller ’ s 1892 veto of the bill incorporating the Ludlow Savings Bank and Trust Company , objecting to the authorization for the directors to issue letters of credit at their discretion . The legislature quickly overrode the veto and reenacted the bill into law . 22
Of the 33 vetoes that were sustained by the legislature in that century , only nine of them marked the end of the legislation . In the remaining instances , the legislature responded to the Governor ’ s criticism by enacting a law that satisfied his concerns . Gov-
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