If it were not the case that you continued to have residency once you had achieved it then every time you ventured outside of Chicago that would start the clock running again ~ and you'd be a resident of nowhere.
They also ruled that it is consistent with Illinois statutory law and the court's practices that such laws be read together and that they achieve the same end ~ to wit, residency.
For a long time I was part of a system of regulation that had such time periods as "4 weeks", "28 days", "20 working days", and "1 month". This caused no end of problems at the limits as field managers would rule that a time-limit was lengthened by 1 to 3 days by 3 day holiday weekends, or that after 4 weeks, everything expired, or that a 31 day month wasn't 28 days so screw the customer.
We fixed those rules finally, but first I had to go through every rule and find every instance of the words "minute", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "quarter", "3 month", "semi-annual", "6 month", "annual" and "365" days ~ oh, yeah, and "12 month". Once we had those suckers in hand we could decide what expressions we wanted to use ~ and if legislation had forced us to use something less than useful.
Still, our position in all cases was that where a time limitation benefited a customer we'd use that, and the same for an extension. That way there'd be no basis for complaint by outsiders.
Worked like a charm ~ almost a totally invisible revision of the rules.
The Illinois court ruled that Illinois practice has been consistent with similar principles. They also noted that now is not the time for a change ~ such as recommended by the Appeals court.
Oh, yeah, the Supreme Court also slapped down that Webster's Dictionary definition with TWO different Illinois court decisions on the matter, and a statute.
Now, let me ask you, did you bother reading the decision?
His “intent” is completely beside the point.
What would be the point of specifying that a candidate must be a “qualified elector,” for which “achieving residency” is already a requirement, and then specifying that the candidate must “reside in” the district?
Section 3.1-10-5(d) exempts active duty military who “reside” elsewhere for a time from the “reside in” requirement for candidates, but it does not exempt people “in the service of the United States” or Chiefs of Staff of the Obama Administration.
So basically, the Illinois Supreme Court has repealed 3.1-10-5(d) and the second half of 3.1-10-5(a) by judicial fiat, and have shown themselves to be black-robed b**ches of the Chicago Machine.
OK look at it from the other side. What would it have taken for Emanuel to do if he had purposely wanted to STOP being a resident of Chicago?