Reference Question of the Week

Information desk staff members received the following reference question after the reference librarian had gone home for the night:

What age must a person be to be governor of Massachusetts?

And the correct answer is:

We can't answer a question of this type over the phone, but if you come into the library we will be happy to suggest some sources you can use to find your own answer.

But just for fun, a number of staff members have suggested possible reference strategies or actually researched the problem.

Two good sources for researching questions of Massachusetts's law are West's Massachusetts Law Finder, Law Ref Area KFM 2461 .M3, and Your Massachusetts Government, Law Ref Area KFM 2809 .A15 Y68x 1984. The most valuable reference in the Law Finder was to MGLA Constitution, Part 2, Chapter 2, Section 1, Article 1 et seq. Your Massachusetts Government had some general information about the governor, but did not include an age limit.

Three books that were suggested, but not consulted, were the Manual of the General Court, the Annotated Laws of Massachusetts Deskbook, and the State Yellow Book. But these books were not consulted because the answer is clearly (or maybe not so clearly) contained in the Massachusetts Constitution itself.

The Massachusetts Constitution can be found online at the Massachusetts State website http://www.state.ma.us/legis/const.htm, in Lexis in the MA-Constitution database (short file name MASS;MACNST), in Westlaw in the MA-ST-ANN database, as well as in other online services. It can also be found in print in the various versions of the Massachusetts statutory code: the Massachusetts General Laws, Massachusetts General Laws Annotated, and the Annotated Laws of Massachusetts.

In the Massachusetts General Laws, the official code of Massachusetts, there is both an unintegrated and an integrated constitution. The unintegrated constitution shows the constitution as originally enacted; the relevant part of which is reproduced here.

PART THE SECOND
The Frame of Government.

Chapter II.
EXECUTIVE POWER.
SECTION I.
The Governor.

Article II. The governor shall be chosen annually; and no person shall be eligible to this office, unless at the time of his election, he shall have been an inhabitant of this commonwealth for seven years next preceding; and unless he shall at the same time, be seised in his own right, of a freehold within the commonwealth of the value of one thousand pounds; and unless he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion.

There seemed to be only three requirements to be eligible to be chosen governor in the annual election: 1) living in the Commonwealth for the seven years preceding your election, 2) owning land in the commonwealth worth at least a thousand pounds, and 3) being a Christian.

Notes do tell us that there are three subsequent amendments that effect this article.

Article VII, while it does not remove the language requiring the governor to declare himself to be of the Christian religion, does negate it by declaring that no oath other than the oath of office may be required of state officers.

Article LXIV, then Article LXXX, and finally Article LXXXII changes the gubernatorial and some other statewide election from annually to biennially, and finally quadrennially. Again the original language was not modified.

Finally Article XXXIV annulled the property ownership requirement.

As mentioned at the beginning of this section, there is also an integrated constitution, one that has the amendments incorporated. Part 2, Chapter 2, Section I, Article II of the integrated constitution looks like this:

Article II. The governor shall be chosen [annually]; and no person shall be eligible to this office, unless at the time of his election, he shall have been an inhabitant of this commonwealth for seven years next preceding; [and unless he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion.]

The sentence regarding property ownership has been removed, and the other sections that have changed are in square brackets, but this is still a very confusing section. No mention is made anywhere of an age requirement for the office of governor of Massachusetts. Which is one of the reasons this is not a question that we should be answering over the phone for anyone.

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