Sec. 1.

The City of Los Angeles shall continue to be a municipal corporation under the same name and possessed of all the property and interests of which it was possessed at the time this Charter takes effect. The boundaries of the City shall be the boundaries as established at the time this Charter takes effect, or as such boundaries may be changed thereafter in the manner authorized by law.  (Added, 1925)

Cities are incorporated through public legislative acts, which delineate the boundaries, and such acts are recognized by judicial bodies without proof; and where a petition for the consolidation of two cities is filed with the Council of the City with the lesser population, said Council is permitted to take judicial notice of the boundary lines of that city, and of the other city, and hence of their contiguity.

People ex rel. McGroarty v. City of Los Angeles, 9 Cal. App. (2d) 431.

Approval of the Charter by a joint resolution of both houses of the Legislature was sufficient to give it validity without the enactment of a bill to be approved by the Governor.

The Legislature as a distinct body consists of the senate and assembly and is empowered by the Constitution to act as a distinct body with reference to the approval of city charters.

Under the Constitution, the charter to be framed for a city government must be consistent with the Constitution and with the general laws of the state, but the whole charter cannot be held invalid because a few of its provisions may he inconsistent with general statutes in force at the time of its adoption.

Brooks v. Fischer, 79 Cal. 173.

A city charter, framed by a board of freeholders, approved by the City, and adopted by the Legislature, can only be amended or changed at intervals of not less than two years, in the manner and by the three-fifths vote provided for in Section 8 of Article XI of the Constitution, and a second board of freeholders cannot be elected in such city to frame another charter for the city to be adopted by a majority vote thereof.

The provisions of the Constitution in regard to the adoption and amendment of freeholders’ charters are mandatory and prohibitory, and the mode of amendment of such charters is exclusively commanded and others are prohibited.

Blanchard v. Hartwell, 131 Cal. 263.

When a new provision is added to a city charter, it must be presumed that a change in the city’s organic law was intended in those particulars indicated by the amendment, or added section. 

Campbell v. City of Los Angeles, 47 Cal. App. (2d) 310, 314.

Under the Freeholders’ Charter of the City of Los Angeles of 1889, there being no provision of the Constitution then providing for a police court thereunder, the provision therein for a police court was void ab initio and was not revived or validated by the mere subsequent passage of the amendment to the Constitution adding Section 8 1/2 of Article XI, authorizing the creation of police courts by Freeholders’ Charter.

Fleming v. Hance, 153 Cal. 162.

A charter provision is to be construed as a law enacted by the Legislature, and it has the same force and effect as a law directly enacted by the Legislature.

Yosemite etc. Corp. v. St. Bd. of Equal., 59 Cal. App. (2d) 39.

Submitting amendments to several sections of the charter as one proposition does not constitute a single amendment.

Callahan v. City and County of San Francisco, 68 Cal. App. (2d) 286, 291.

Under the Constitution, the charter of a city is not only the organic law of the city, but it is also a law of the state, within the constitutional limitations.

A charter of a city, being an enactment in the exercise of the lawmaking power of the state, is subject to the recognized rules of statutory construction, and, in the interpretation of a legislative enactment, it is the general rule that the state and its agencies are not bound by general words limiting the rights and interests of its citizens, unless such public authorities be included within the limitation, expressly or by necessary implication.

Kubach Co. v. McGuire, 199 Cal. 215.

The Legislature has no power to mould or change a freeholders charter of a city, when such instrument is before it for approval.

Mesmer v. Board, etc., 23 Cal. App. 578.

It is not within the power of courts to amend, revise or rewrite any portion of the charter.

Mullins v. Henderson, 75 Cal. App. (2d) 117, 134.