No present political tendency is more marked than the extension of law to cover ever wider fields of conduct. Political scientists and constitutional lawyers have come to recognize that this tendency can be properly assessed only by examining how law operates in contrast and connection with other agencies of order such as custom, ethics, religion, and economic forces. When one wishes to understand the failure of such laws as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Volstead Act to accomplish the results expected of them, or when one wishes to form a judgment of the effects to be anticipated from the operation of a minimumwage law or from the codification of international law, it is important to understand the relation to the other forces which are giving direction to human conduct. There are regularities and patterns of adjustment in human behavior due to other causes than law administered by government; and these regularities not only work at times toward the same, or some of the same, ends which it is sought to attain by law, but at times they form a highly resistant part of the material against which law must work. An effort will be made in this paper to present the problem of law and government as part and parcel of the whole wider problem of social order, beginning with an attempt to understand the nature and operation of what may be called the “non-political” agencies of order. The task is facilitated by the contributions which anthropology has made to our knowledge of primitive peoples, and by the light which psychology has shed on the springs of conduct. We no longer have to rely like Hobbes and Rousseau on a naive theory of human nature or upon a fancy-picture of savage life. The outstanding result of the newer contributions has been to emphasize the central significance of the principle of relativity in the social no less than the physical sciences.

Everyone has heard the gibe that the specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less, while a sociologist is one who knows less and less about more and more. Another quip has it that while psychology is all data and no conclusions, sociology is all conclusions and no data. Political science itself has not escaped a certain amount of cheap disparagement from those who know little or nothing about it. Thus a political scientist has been described as one who among politicians is reckoned a scientist, and among scientists is reckoned a politician; or, indeed, as one who is called a political scientist because he is neither—an obvious paraphrase of Voltaire's famous sarcasm regarding the Holy Roman Empire. At any rate, the time has come when a certain group of political scientists have wearied of such gibes, to say nothing of that condescension which they think they detect in the attitude of laboratory scientists toward them; and they have registered a vow to convert political science from a “normative” or “telic” science, as it has been variously called, into a natural science, into a science which will hereafter be printed in lower case instead of in upper, and will, moreover (the height of ambition of all true sciences) be able to predict the future just as astronomy, physics, and chemistry are able to do—not to mention astrology, alchemy, and palmistry. Nor is this newly conceived ambition the product merely of discontent; it is rather more, perhaps, response to the beckoning of opportunity—the opportunity spelled by the rise of the behavioristic psychology.

It has now been ten years since the German people elected the National Assembly which gave them the Weimar constitution. A decade of self-government under this liberal and democratic charter has rather definitely established the lines of party cleavage and the general features of the party system, and the time seems ripe for a survey of the system with a view to elucidating its principal characteristics. The present article is concerned only incidentally with party history before the revolution of 1918, and also not primarily with the party programs of today. It has to do, rather, with what Lord Bryce once referred to as “the pathology of party government,” and also with what political scientists have now come to recognize as the heart—one might say the thermostat—of popular government, namely, party organization and machinery. Parteiwesen is the German word, and it refers to the practical operation of the party system.

Why should Germany be the subject of such a study? There are several very good reasons. Since the overthrow of the imperial régime, Germany has been operating under a very progressive constitution. In many respects it is the most advanced constitution in the world. Political parties are required to operate such a system based on popular rule, and the party system developed in the Reich is so unique and interesting, so illustrative of many problems which are now troubling political thinkers the world over, that it warrants close study. Then again, by throwing light on the motive power and the nerves of the government, we will be better able to understand how the government itself operates. In brief, we find in Germany a new government operated by means of a new party system. The experience of an intelligent and powerful people with such a system should be useful to everyone interested in the problem of popular government.

The American Political Science Association was founded December 30, 1903, at New Orleans. Its organization was the outgrowth of a movement looking toward a national conference on comparative legislation. A group having the matter in charge held a meeting in December, 1902, at Washington, the call for which stated that the formation of an American Society of Comparative Legislation had been suggested as “particularly desirable because of the complexity of our system of federal government.” Interest in legislation in general and in the problems presented by the lawmaking activities of the federal and state agencies in particular was, therefore, the starting point from which proceeded the wider range of interests which gave rise to this Association. The preliminary meeting in Washington indicated that if a new national society were to be formed it might be well to enlarge its scope so as to embrace the whole of political science, of which comparative legislation is an important part. A year later, thanks to the coöperation of the American Historical Association and of the American Economic Association, which were having joint meetings in New Orleans, opportunity was given to the group to form an organization, the members of which were in large part members of one or both of the older Associations. The adoption of the constitution of this Association was the result. In a way, therefore, the American Political Science Association is the god-child of the American Historical and the American Economic Associations. All but two annual meetings have been held jointly with one or both of the older bodies, indicating not only a factor of common membership but also a large measure of common interests and kindred endeavors.

Whatever may be the present attitude of the people of the United States toward the League of Nations, it now seems clear that the Government of the United States has come to feel the necessity for such an international organization. For several years past, official American coöperation with the League has steadily increased. The situation has now developed to a point where the current formulae for explaining the official attitude are to some extent misleading, and it may serve a useful purpose to trace the changes which have occurred since 1920, to survey the situation as it now exists, and to forecast some of the probabilities for the future.

Let us start with the fact that the United States has not ratified the Covenant of the League of Nations and has not accepted the place provided for her in the Assembly and the Council of the League. It is beside the present purpose to explain that fact, to attempt to say whether it is due to drift or to design, or to offer any argument for changing it. Whatever the seven millions of voters who constituted President Harding's majority in 1920 may have desired at that time, the Government of the United States has since interpreted their votes as a determination that the United States should not accept membership in the League, and it has proceeded on the theory that that issue is closed. But if this fact is to be taken as the starting-point, there still remains a question as to the account to be taken by the Government of the United States of other important facts, viz., that the League of Nations continues to exist, that more than fifty governments are vigorously pushing its work and effecting through it their coöperative action, and that much of the organized international life of our time is centered at Geneva.

A general election has been aptly compared to an instantaneous photograph of a galloping horse. It is a static representation of a public opinion that is by its very essence perpetually changing, and a newly elected House of Commons has not yet met before it is in a sense out of date and no longer fully representative. Even if a general election photograph had permanent significance, it would be open to the criticism of inaccuracy at the time of taking. Readers of this Review are aware of the misleading character of the British electoral machine—of the fact that whenever more than two candidates contest a constituency, the one elected may very well represent but a fraction over a third of the electorate; so that election statistics show a serious discrepancy between the distribution of votes and the allocation of seats.

On the eve of dissolution, the House of Commons comprised 400 Conservative, 162 Socialist, and 46 Liberal members, with seven Independents. The new House comprises 289 Socialists, 260 Conservatives, 59 Liberals, and seven Independents. This distribution of seats, we have said, does not accurately correspond to that of votes cast, since the Socialists polled 8,370,005 votes, the Conservatives 8,641,170, and the Liberals 5,295,308. The usual explanation of the discrepancy is that the Labor party had all the luck of the three-cornered contests in which a minority candidate was returned. This, however, happens to be false; that luck went to the Conservatives: of 313 successful “minority” candidates, 153 are Conservatives, 122 Socialists, and 38 Liberals; while of 291 seats held by a clear majority, Socialists have 166, Conservatives 105, and Liberals 20.

One of the results of the passage of the manhood suffrage law of 1925 in Japan has been the rise of proletarian parties and the election of eight of their candidates as members of the Diet. In the House of Representatives these new members find themselves in the company of half a dozen minor parties and a group of independents, alternately ignored and courted by the two major parties. Their appearance coincides with a time when liberal opinion in Japan favors the two-party rather than the multiple-party system. But the economic significance of the new parties has saved them from the aspersion of merely adding to the confusion of minor groups. Moreover, the failure of Japanese liberals to develop a great party of liberalism invites a new association to seize a vantage ground so long unoccupied.

On the eve of the general election of 1928 the founders of the proletarian parties had reason to hope that careful strategy in the campaign would give the new parties a good start upon the same road that led the Labor party in Great Britain to the leadership of the parliamentary opposition and finally into office. The manhood suffrage act had increased the electorate from 3,341,000 to 12,534,360. Among the nine million new voters are included practically all the male factory toilers and agricultural workers. Here, indeed, is a rich field for proletarian vote-getting.

The first of these papers carried a warning against conceiving social order in an absolute sense. It does not mean suppression of all forms of competition and defeat, but only the protection of selected human interests at the expense of others. Even taking order in this limited sense, it was found that custom and voluntary adjustment furnishan incomplete apparatus for its furtherance. The effectiveness of custom was seen to be connected with the auxiliary activity of an organ of leadership to serve as a focus for the radiation of custom, and a pivot for change. Voluntary adjustment, while capable of resolving many interest-conflicts beyond the reach of custom, was also found to rely largely on the initiatory activity of an organ of mediation. Finally, we have thus far considered social order primarily from the point of view of the prevention or adjustment of direct conflicts of interests between individuals.

The functioning of a social group requires more than that its members should refrain from what other members resent as invasions of their interests. If the advantages of group life are to be reaped, it is necessary that at many points the group should, aswe say, act as a unit, which means that each member should so shape his conduct with reference to the conduct of others that the acts of all, when thus geared together, will produce an aggregate or group result. This gearing together of the acts of separate individuals is what is commonly called “coöperation.” Coöperation has value only as it furthers interests which belong to individuals.

In the constitution of Massachusetts is found the following: “In the government of this commonwealth the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers or either of them; to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” This is probably the most explicit statement of the doctrine of separation of powers to be found in the constitution of any of the states of this Union. While the doctrine has been set forth in other constitutions in other language, the constitutions of all the states as construed and interpreted have come to have substantially the same meaning. For more than a century, lawyers, courts, political scientists, publicists, and the people generally regarded the separation of the government into coördinate departments as one of the corner-stones of our liberties.

Montesquieu, who had no doubt derived his ideas upon the subject from the writings of Locke and a study of English law, in 1748 published his great work, The Spirit of Laws. In this treatise he gave a new exposition of the doctrine of separation of powers and the reasons for it, in a form which gave it wide currency in the English-speaking world; but this exposition was intended by Montesquieu to be a statement of political theory, and was so accepted by political writers of the time.

The purpose of this article is to describe the principal provisions of the Local Government Act recently passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, and to give some account of the forces behind the changes, without in any way touching on the controversies of political parties. The hand and brain of man have speeded up life; social conditions change ever more rapidly, and social institutions must change with them, those of government included, though some seem to believe that they are as the rocks of the ages. The Local Government Act contains 138 sections and 12 schedules, and there is room in this paper for only the more important of its provisions.

There has been in Britain for many years a steady stream of discussion, indeed at times floods, on needed changes in the structure of local government. Minds were prepared, therefore, for reforms, even if some people had almost come to the conclusion that the obstacles would prevent more than proposals. Whatever the differences of political parties, there has been a current of continuity in the development of local government throughout the big changes of the last century. Political wind and weather may have given a twist to a branch here and there, but the main outline of the old tree has been fixed by deeper causes; the big changes have been produced by underlying social conditions, independent of party; and the Local Government Act, in most of its provisions, will be found to be in line with this continuity, whatever the conflicting views on matters of detail.

(December 3, 1928, to March 4, 1929). “I have stated universally to various callers,” wrote the President-elect to the President on January 28, 1929, “that it would be improper for me to express any views on current matters of the administration.” It is aside from the point to question the complete consistency of Mr. Hoover's added remark (the subject being the cruiser construction bill): “As you know, I warmly support your own views, and you may so inform others if you wish to do so.” The truth is that the President-elect would have set the tone of the short session if he had merely failed to state that there would be no special session. As soon as his willingness to call Congress back in April was known, most of the steam escaped and pressures in connection with farm relief which might have involved the whole program were forestalled. Under these relaxing circumstances, the cynosure of the session came to be the ironical juxtaposition of the left-over cruiser bill and the multilateral peace treaty in the Senate. Meanwhile the momentum of the inherently decentralized congressional system carried it past the dead-points of the interregnum and produced interesting, and even noteworthy, bits of domestic legislation.

I start with an assumption. It is an assumption which can be supported by impressive evidence, and which political experts, familiar with that evidence, will be disposed to admit: campaign expenditures, in many parts of this country, tend to be not only excessive but also corrupt.

This corruption is particularly noxious because it affects the very foundations of the democratic process. Therefore, when once its existence has been recognized, the application of a remedy becomes imperative. Only one question can arise: What is the appropriate remedy?

Twenty years ago Mr. Perry Belmont was prescribing publicity. His pharmacopoeia resembled, in its simplicity, that of the late Sir William Osier, which was confined to nux vomica and hope. According to his belief—and it is shared by many today—the best method of treatment is to tell the patient what is wrong with him and let him cure himself. In a word, if the law requires publicity for the details of campaign contributions and expenditures, an informed public opinion, becoming aware of unhealthy conditions, can be relied upon to correct them.

Experience makes it plain that this prescription contains too much hope and not enough nux vomica. Public interest in campaign expenditures and the abuses connected with them is spasmodic. It can be roused from its chronic torpor only by the shock of some particularly scandalous or dramatic revelation. The shock comes at frequent intervals.

It is the purpose of this note to bring down to date an analysis of the selection and tenure of bureau chiefs in the national administration offered by the writer in this Review in 1926. A complete enumeration of the changes that have taken place at this crucial level in the civil service during an interval of nearly three years has suggestive value, at least in indicating the trend of our bureaucracy.

The mode of approach in the original study was primarily biographical. The bureaus were classified with reference to the manner of selection and the nature of the prior experience of the bureau chiefs then in office. The same method and arrangement are used in dealing with shifts since 1926.

First to be considered are the new bureau chiefs whose positions are in the classified competitive service under the supervision of the Civil Service Commission. Replacements in this group since 1926 have involved the amalgamated Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, the Bureau of Dairy Industry, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the Bureau of Biological Survey, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Entomology, and indirectly the newly constituted Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration and the Plant Quarantine and Control Administration—all in the Department of Agriculture; also the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior. In two instances competitive examinations have been employed; in another, one has been ordered; in the remaining cases the new chiefs have been chosen by promotion from within the competitive classified service.

The rapid development of administrative law during this century has meant a multiplication of administrative tribunals. The functions of these bodies vary widely. Some have regulatory powers, others only fact-finding authority. The Interstate Commerce Commission may fix rates; the Tariff Commission may only investigate differences in costs of production.

In all such cases, however, there is fundamentally the same motivation behind their creation. The complexity, technicality, constant fluctuations, and expanding scope of the problems that confront Congress have compelled it to devolve some of its authority upon other bodies, and in some cases to set up agencies for the collection of data as a basis for decision. These very same factors have made our traditional trial courts unsuitable agencies for the exercise of powers thus devolved, and politically controlled bureaus unfit for the investigation of politically significant facts. Congress, therefore, has set up specialized bodies, which are to be manned by experts in particular fields, supplied with elaborate means of research, and authorized to act upon the best obtainable information and opinion. The purpose is thus clearly to cause scientific methods and expert judgment to be brought to bear to the maximum extent possible.

It is submitted that for this purpose to be carried out—for the duties of these tribunals to be performed under the influence of the “judicial habit of thought”—it is essential that the members be guaranteed independence in the exercise of their personal judgment, uninfluenced by direct pressure from political superiors or special interests. And it is a matter of common experience that independence of tenure is a prerequisite of independence of judgment.

During the important political year 1928 no fewer than five separate congressional committees were engaged in investigating various phases of the problem of campaign funds. First, the Reed committee, which was appointed by resolution of the 69th Congress to investigate the elections of 1926, was continued in existence so that it could wind up its work. In addition, it was given authority by a new resolution of the 70th Congress to investigate the New Jersey senatorial primary of 1928. Second, the committee on privileges and elections of the Senate was authorized to hear and determine the Wilson-Vare election contest in Pennsylvania. A sub-committee, with Senator Waterman as chairman, was selected on January 27 to perform this task. Third, the Senate created a special committee to investigate pre-convention and election expenditures in the campaign of 1928. Senator Steiwer was appointed chairman of this committee. Fourth, a special House committee was appointed on the day before the close of the session to look into the campaign expenditures of 1928, with Congressman Lehlbach of New Jersey as chairman. Finally, the Senate by resolution authorized the committee on post offices and post roads, or any sub-committee thereof, to investigate the alleged sale of Southern postmasterships, and Senator Brookhart was appointed chairman of the sub-committee.

The Reed committee held hearings in April and May in connection with the Wilson-Vare contest in Pennsylvania, and in June in connection with the New Jersey senatorial primary. These investigations did not lead to any particularly valuable disclosures, although they produced some interesting and enlightening information about the Vare machine.

In 1803 the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall, refused to enforce an act of Congress on the ground that it conflicted with the Constitution. This decision was noteworthy in that it was the first occasion on which the Supreme Court asserted such a right, and it has since come to be looked upon as the cornerstone of judicial supremacy.

The accuracy of the Chief Justice's reasoning has been attacked on various grounds, and it has been pointed out that every argument used by him in favor of judicial review begins by assuming the whole ground in dispute. Very few authorities who have taken this view have asserted that the courts have usurped this power. Obviously nothing could be farther from the truth. A course of action which had the backing of nearly every influential member of the Constitutional Convention, which was frequently stated, generally without opposition, in the various ratifying conventions, and which was very clearly set forth in the Federalist, cannot be said to be a “usurpation of power” in any sense of the term. However, authorities do point out that the true explanation of this power of our courts is not to be found in the mere fact that we have a written constitution which is the “supreme law.” Marshall himself recognized this shortly after the Marbury case, when he gave equal weight to the “general principles which are common to our free institutions” along with “the particular provisions of the Constitution of the United States,” on the theory that “the nature of society and of government …. prescribe some limits to the legislative power.”