Matter of Application of Harcourt

The petitioner was, by a judge of the superior court of the county of Sonoma, adjudged to be an insane person and thereupon ordered committed to a state hospital for the insane in this state, and, claiming that the court was without legal authority to order the commitment, she has applied to this court for a writ of habeas corpus and asks that thus she be released from the restraint of her personal liberty following the said order of commitment.

‘1 The power of the superior courts or the judges thereof to examine or try and commit insane persons to the hospitals for the insane, maintained by the state, is derivable alone from legislative enactments” (State Com. in Lunacy v. Eldridge, 7 Cal. App. 298, 302 , [ 94 Pac. 597 ]), and where the statute prescribes a specific test determinative of the question of insanity; that is to say, where the test thus prescribed requires a finding of a specifically defined character of mental derangement to authorize or justify the commitment of the patient to a public hospital for the care and treatment of the insane, then the evidence addressed to the issue and the findings of the judge must measure up to such test in order to sustain the…