Petitioner was convicted in the superior court of the county of Los Angeles for a violation of the statute known as the Wright Act (Stats. 1921, p. 79) (a high misdemeanor). He seeks his discharge through habeas corpus upon the ground that jurisdiction of said offense has been divested out of the superior court and invested exclusively in the municipal courts of said county.

Upon this identical conviction petitioner sought his discharge from the district court of appeal, second appellate district, division two. Said matter was heard by that court in conjunction with a similar case and opinion therein delivered sustaining the jurisdiction of the superior court (People v. Denault, 81 Cal. App. 1 [ 253 Pac. 151 ]). While we are unable to concur in the conclusion of said court, we are satisfied with a portion of the decision and adopt the same as a part hereof as follows:

Under sections 1, 5, and 13 of article VI of the constitution as they read prior to 1923, it was within the power of the legislature to confer jurisdiction on an inferior court such as a police or justice’s court of all misdemeanors, high and low, and such jurisdiction, when so conferred, thereby divested the superior court of all jurisdiction in the premises. (Green v. Superior Court, supra; In the Matter of the Application of Westenberg, 167 Cal. 309, 317 [ 139 Pac. 674 ].)

It necessarily follows, therefore, that jurisdiction over all misdemeanors may be conferred by the legislature upon-a municipal or any other lawfully established court and the fact that such court is a court of record and of some greater dignity than an inferior court only makes the more certain the conclusion we have drawn.

It is also incontestably true that if jurisdiction over some misdemeanors may exist in an inferior court as to cases arising outside its territorial limits, but within the county of its location, such jurisdiction may be given over all misdemeanor cases so arising anywhere in the said county. And if it be competent, for example, to confer jurisdiction upon a justice’s court or police court of Los Angeles County of any misdemeanor committed anywhere therein, it must be true that jurisdiction over every misdemeanor committed therein may be vested in such inferior courts. And if such jurisdiction may be given to inferior courts by the legislature, verily it may be given to municipal courts established under the amendments of 1923 which, although inferior to superior courts, are nevertheless superior to inferior courts.

But it has been expressly held that it is within the legislative power to confer such jurisdiction on justices’ courts as to all so-called low misdemeanors arising anywhere in the county wherein the township for such court is located. (Graham v. Mayor etc. of Fresno, 151 Cal. 465 [ 91 Pac. 147 ], and in In re Kaster, 52 Cal. App. 454 [ 198 Pac. 1029 ]; affirmed, 185 Cal. 647 [ 198 Pac. 1031 ].)

The conclusion irresistibly follows then from the foregoing premises that jurisdiction may be given to a municipal court of all misdemeanors, high and low, arising anywhere in the county where such court is established unless the provisions of section 11 of article VI of the constitution, as amended in 1923, expressly forbid this being done. An examination of this amendment not only fails to disclose any such inhibition but, on the contrary, clearly shows that said section was framed in the light of the conclusion we have above announced. The pertinent language of the amendment is as follows: “Municipal courts shall have original jurisdiction, except as" hereinafter provided ... in all criminal cases amounting to misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment in the city or city and county or county jail, or punishable by fine or such imprisonment.” No limitation as to territory can be found in this language. The further provision: “The legislature shall provide by general law . . . for the jurisdiction thereof except in the particulars otherwise specified in this section . „ . gives to the legislature power to fix the jurisdiction of said court, subject only to the previous limitations therein announced, but as to misdemeanors no limit is previously fixed. The power of the legislature as to misdemeanors is therefore practically plenary. A similar situation was before the court in Green v. Superior Court, 78 Cal. 556, 564 [ 21 Pac. 307 ], and it was there said:

This interpretation of section 11 seems to be in direct accord with Tuttle on California Municipal Courts, section 37, pages 70-73, where it is said: “But the constitutional provisions involved in those cases (referring to decisions of other states) were somewhat different from the constitution of California, not only in the description of the courts with respect to their local nature, but also in the fact that the constitutions there involved contained no general grant of jurisdiction in terms unlimited territorially, as in California.”

Again, the same author says in section 35, pages 63, 64: “As we have observed in the preceding sections, in the portion of the constitution defining the subject matter of the jurisdiction of municipal courts no express limitation is made with respect to the territorial limits within which the case must arise, but the grant of jurisdiction is in the same general terms as in the case of the superior court. Whether this results in giving to municipal courts as broad a jurisdiction territorially, within the limits of the subject matter, as is granted to the superior courts, depends upon whether any other provisions of the constitution peculiar to municipal courts operate directly to impose territorial limitations, or indirectly in that regard by permitting the legislature to do so.”

It seems also that section 1462 of the Penal Code has been happily framed in accord with the reasoning above set forth, for this section attempts to confer upon any municipal court jurisdiction of all misdemeanors of all grades arising anywhere in the county. It would certainly be an unjustifiable anomaly to have a municipal court with county-wide jurisdiction as to some misdemeanors but with local jurisdiction only as to all others. After all, our law divides crimes into felonies and misdemeanors, and high and low grade misdemeanors are not known to our law as such. The name is a relic of the common law, and no legal reason exists or can be imagined under our system for a constitutional distinction between classes of misdemeanors. (Pen. Code, secs. 16, 17.)

We therefore conclude that as to all misdemeanors committed in counties having one or more municipal courts therein, the superior court has been bereft of its jurisdiction thereof, and as to all such misdemeanors, high and low, so committed, the municipal court or courts have original jurisdiction thereof. The fact that the civil jurisdiction conferred upon municipal courts may not be so broad as that applicable to misdemeanors furnishes no insuperable argument against the conclusions above announced. In counties in which large cities such as Los Angeles are located, where all departments of the superior court are crowded with business, these municipal courts have doubtless been authorized to relieve the congestion by transferring all misdemeanor cases not otherwise disposed of to the new courts. (See Green v. Superior Court, supra.) And if these courts be not given county-wide jurisdiction in such cases, this legislation will have largely failed in its purpose. This fact is entitled to some weight in ascertaining the intent of the framers of the constitutional amendments and the legislation thereunder.

It is asserted that in Bakkenston v. Superior Court, 197 Cal. 504 [ 241 Pac. 874 ], views have been expressed which are opposed to those expressed herein. We cannot concede this assertion to be sound. In that case we had before us a provision of said section 11 which read as follows: “In any city or in any city and county where such municipal court has been established, and in townships situated in whole or in part in such city or city and county, there shall be no other court inferior to the superior court except as herein provided.” The facts were that a Los Angeles County township lay territorially partly within and partly without the cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach, wherein had been established municipal courts. The point decided was that said township did not lose outright its identity, its existence, nor its ordinary jurisdiction because partly within said cities. It only lost its jurisdiction over that portion of the township territory lying within the cities, but as to that portion lying without, it retained its territorial integrity and its ordinary jurisdiction of causes. In answering the contention that such township and its jurisdiction had been obliterated, the court, among other things, said: “But it nowhere appears from said amendment when considered as a whole that it was the intent of those who framed it to disturb to the extent of destroying the judicial organization within those portions of such affected townships as lay outside of the limits of those municipalities which had decided to set up municipal courts within their said limits. To so interpret the particular language of the portion of said amendment upon which the petitioner relies and which is above excerpted, would be to give to the amendment as a whole the effect of either taking away from the inhabitants of the portion of such townships as lay without the bounds of such municipalities their already established justices’ courts, leaving them without tribunals for the institution and trial of causes within the jurisdiction of such court, or of extending the jurisdiction of the municipal courts of contiguous cities over such outlying territory, neither of which results is thinkable as within the intent of the framers of this amendment to the constitution, since to give it such an interpretation would be to take away from the inhabitants of such outlying territory their already established system of justices’ courts and township officers by the vote of the electorate of an incorporated municipality of which they form no part, and to substitute in place thereof a system of municipal courts in the establishment of which and in the selection of the judges and other officers of which they would have no vote or voice.”

But the extension of the jurisdiction of the municipal court throughout the township and county as to one set of offenses only is a far different thing from destroying a township government outright. Indeed, early in said opinion the court, in speaking of the jurisdiction of the municipal courts, said that they were “confined in some respects as to their jurisdiction and functions to the terri torial limits of the municipalities thus resolving to establish the same,” thereby showing that the court had in mind that they might in some cases have extraterritorial jurisdiction. Again, this transfer of jurisdiction as to high-grade misdemeanors takes nothing whatsoever from the jurisdiction of any of the justices’ courts; it only subtracts from the jurisdiction of the superior court, which was always county-wide as to the offense here involved.

We are entirely satisfied that petitioner was convicted in a court that had no jurisdiction whatsoever over the offense charged against him.

The petitioner is discharged.

Shenk, J., Waste, C. J., Curtis, J., Langdon, J., and Sea-well, J., concurred.