Note 148 — Chapter XVII · A CENTURY AND A QUARTER OF DIVORCE LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1776-1903

Laws (1833), 235 ff.; Const. of 1832, Art. VII, sec. 15: Poore, Charters, II, 1077. The omission of the clause expressly requiring legislative sanction in the constitution of 1832 seems clearly to be intended to abolish legislative divorce. Yet the act of 1840 makes the decrees of the courts "final and conclusive, as fully as though the same had been confirmed by the legislature;" from which language one would naturally infer that the legislature had continued to ratify divorces after the constitution went into effect: Laws (1840), 51.

Legislative divorce is prohibited by the constitution of 1868, Art. IV, sec. 22: Poore, Charters, II, 1084; and by Art. IV, secs. 87 and 90 of the constitution of 1890: New York Convention Manual, Part II, Vol. I, 1067 (1894).