Internal Procedures. Unschooled in the history and theory of Occidental parliamentarism, the old political factions, with new names, naturally try to adapt the new order of things in the Diet to the normal Japanese pattern. Their modus operandi during the first and second sessions—by way of adjusting to the Diet as the “highest organ of state power”—is an eventful chapter in the development of popular government in Japan.

Basic is the fact that political parties manage the Diet: every action is a party action, every vote a party vote, every decision a party decision. The individual member stands for nothing. Bills and resolutions, motions of any kind, speeches, interpellations, filibustering, even heckling and rowdyism, in committee and House sessions—all are products of political parties.

The primary agency through which political parties collectively manipulate the Diet is an entirely new piece of legislative machinery, the “Steering Committee,” one of 21 standing committees in each House.

The Supreme Court's decisions dealing with civil liberties in the ten years under review fall into four groups: (1) cases involving the rights protected by the First Amendment—freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly; (2) those concerned with racial discrimination; (3) cases enlarging the power of the federal government to protect civil rights against invasion by private persons; (4) war-time cases arising out of conflicts between civil liberty and military power. Decisions dealing with procedural due process and other rights of those accused of crime are discussed in another part of this symposium.

I. FIRST AMENDMENT—FREEDOM OF RELIGION, SPEECH, PRESS, AND ASSEMBLY

During the decade we are examining, the Supreme Court not only has decided a substantial number of cases involving freedom of speech, press, and religion, but it has developed a new and important judicial philosophy or doctrine with respect to them. In this judicial doctrine, three principles are fused. The first is that the four liberties protected by the First Amendment are so indispensable to the democratic process and to the preservation of the freedom of our people that they occupy a preferred place in our scheme of constitutional values.

The problem of adjusting the units and areas of local government to meet changing conditions seems to be a universal one. It involves not only the question of procedure, but also the quest of the ideal. With the exception of school districts, extensive experimentation has not been forthcoming in the United States; other English-speaking countries have been far more concerned with local units and areas.

The present paper deals with the experiences of four central governments—England and Wales, New Zealand, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. None of them has found the ideal system. All have evolved various successful techniques to adjust local units and areas from time to time.

I

Widespread interest in reorganizing the areas and units of local government in England and Wales has been evident since before 1944. During the period 1943 to 1945, numerous individuals and groups came forward with plans for reform, among them the Labor party, the Liberal party, the Liberal National Committee, the National Association of Local Government Officers, the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association, and the Urban and Rural Districts Associations. Proposals by the two Liberal groups, the counties, and the urban and rural districts involved only minor variations from the existing local government structure. As a result, most interest was focused upon the NALGO and AMC reports calling for varying plans of single all-purpose authorities and on Labor's proposal for a two-tier structure.

From the standpoint of the national legislature, the constitution of Japan which became effective on May 3, 1947, contains the following significant reforms: (1) popular sovereignty replaces the sovereignty of the emperor; (2) the Diet is the chief branch of government; (3) an elected House of Councillors supersedes the House of Peers; (4) the cabinet is responsible to the Diet; (5) the “invisible government” of crown agencies is abolished.

The preamble to the new constitution begins: “We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet…, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people.” As for the once sacred and inviolable emperor, he does “not have powers related to government,” but functions merely as “the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power,” performing, “with the advice and approval of the cabinet,” only such acts as promulgating laws, convoking the Diet and dissolving the House of Representatives, proclaiming general elections, attesting the appointment of officials, and awarding honors.

In No. 78 of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them…” Whatever acceptance this view of the judge as automaton and of the judicial process as a ministerial function may once have had, little trace remains of it today, after ten years of experience with the “reorganized” Supreme Court. The Roosevelt Court was not, of course, the first on which judicial decisions were influenced by the personal values of its justices. Throughout the history of the Court, the autobiographical element in its output has been as important as when Justice Holmes bluntly told his colleagues in 1905 that “this case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain.” But the prevailing theory was that judges did not make law, they merely found it.

The constitutional revolution of 1935–37 changed all that. The public, as Max Lerner says, “began to see that judicial decisions are not babies brought by constitutional storks, but are born out of the travail of economic circumstance.” For two terms, the Constitution meant what Justice Roberts said it meant. After the consummation of the revolution, the forces which had been most ardent in picturing earlier conservative courts as demonstrating the workings of a government of law could only explain the strange phenomenon of a liberal court as the triumph of a government of men. Additional recent factors serving to underline the personal basis of judicial decisions have been the tossing of barbed phrases on the bench, Justice Jackson's ill-tempered public attack on one of his colleagues, and the mounting tide of dissenting opinions.

In normal times and as to normal countries, the study of the continuity of political party life would be of interest mainly to the political scientist. But these are not normal times, and Japan today is not a normal country. In 1948, the subject holds far more than academic interest, and it is intimately affected by the supervision of Japanese administration by the Allied Powers.

Allied policy affecting the continuity of political influence is shown in the famed “purge directive” of January 4, 1946, known as SCAPIN 550, “The Removal and Exclusion of Undesirable Personnel from Public Office.” This article, however, is not concerned with that directive but with the character of the pre-war political influence that remains after the purge has cut out affected elements. It is concerned with the element of pre-war political leadership present in the founding of the two major postwar conservative parties, the effect of the purge directive upon their leadership, their organizational and institutional character, the political influence of governmental bureaucracies, and the problem of party finance. Finally, attention is given to the possibility of a merger of the prewar elements into one post-war organization.

The two conservative parties contending for political supremacy today are the Democratic-Liberal party (Minshu Jiyu-to), and the Democratic party (Minshuto), respectively the direct lineal descendants of the Liberal party (Jiyuto) and the Progressive party (Shimpoto), both of which were organized in November, 1945.

The closing chapter in the history of the white primary in the South has seemed since 1944 to be in process of being written. In that year, the United States Supreme Court, by invalidating in Smith v. Allwright the white primary rule of the Texas state Democratic convention, dealt a stunning, if not immediately mortal, blow to this most significant political custom or practice of the Southern states. The refusal of this court on April 19, 1948, to review a federal circuit court decision invalidating the white primary arrangements of South Carolina, created in 1944 to circumvent the effect of the Allwright decision, seems to have administered the judicial coup de grâce. It would, however, be unsafe to predict when “finis” may be set down for all states, political areas, counties, and voting precincts where by one means or another the Negro has long been barred from participation in the all-important primaries of the Democratic party. The remaining suffrage requirements, registration restrictions, and election provisions, and the political and administrative methods of applying them which still are employed in some Southern states and in parts of others in order to render it difficult for Negroes to vote will not be immediately eliminated. Moreover, the effects of political action have not been fully tested by the Democratic leaders of the South. At the present moment, plans for united efforts on their part are under consideration; and these could have far-reaching results before the end of the current presidential election year. Whatever the abstract justice of the situation, traditional attitudes and customs cannot be uprooted easily and have a way of resisting judicial or legislative fiat, particularly when it is honestly felt by many that such fiat has been imposed from the outside and by people unaware of the difficulties and adjustments involved.

UNESCO has frequently been criticized for not having devoted enough of its efforts and resources to the social sciences. To some extent, such criticism may appear justified (and not to social scientists alone), and it provides little comfort to know that UNESCO is, in this respect, by no means unique, but reflects orthodox patterns and attitudes in relation to the social sciences. However, its work In this field is hampered ab initio by two serious obstacles which do not prevail to the same degree in other scientific disciplines. In the first place, there is the lack of international associations of social scientists. UNESCO is not a university or research center which aims primarily at the advancement of the frontiers of human knowledge, but is, rather, a clearing house whose main purpose is to make available already existing knowledge for socially and internationally useful purposes. UNESCO can, and does, perform a significant function by planning projects which cannot be carried out by a single country, but depend on the working together of scientists from many parts of the world; such projects, desirable as they may be, cannot be easily realized in those areas of learning, however, in which, as in the social sciences, no—or no effective—international professional organizations exist. Much of the actual research and writing in an internationally planned enterprise has to be “farmed out” to individual institutions and persons in various countries, and the absence of representative international social science associations has constituted a serious obstacle to the implementation of UNESCO programs.

The rapid expansion of courses in international relations on the university level is causing an acute need for a consideration of the contents of the introductory course. More and more political scientists are required to teach international relations, and many of them are not at all certain about what material to cover or what approach to use. The relative newness of courses in international relations and the lack of any standard criteria have created a situation perplexing to both teacher and student.

The field of international relations may be broken down into international law, international organization, and international politics. The study of international politics is the basic, introductory course in the field. International politics is really a study of the primary factors that enter into the politics of nations as reflected in current international developments. International politics is a new academic discipline only in so far as it involves the selection of certain pertinent material largely from the social sciences and the application of these data to international developments. The study of international politics reflects the present tendency toward the consideration of social science as a whole and away from its artificial division into separate compartments.

The development of Japan's Socialist party since V.J. Day may logically be considered in three periods. The first period, that of reorganization, began in August, 1945, and continued until the first post-war election in April, 1946. The second period comprised the months between April, 1946, and June, 1947, during which Socialists were gathering strength in the chief opposition party. The third period, from May, 1947, to February, 1948, saw the revolutionary passage of Japan's government into the hands of a Socialist-led cabinet.

Left-Wing Realignment: August, 1945–April, 1946. Against a background of military defeat, dissolution of war-time political agencies, and resulting efforts at political realignment should be set the movement which led to formation of the present Shakaito (Social Democratic party). By late August of 1945, the political ferment was active; by early September, Tokyo papers were reporting that remnants of the old proletarian and agrarian organizations—Ronoto (Laborers' and Farmers' party), Nominto (Farmers' party), and Shakai Taishuto (Social Mass party)—were already drawing the lines of the new party formation.

Few American political scientists have heard of the “Federal Labor Relations Commission,” but to a small group of students at Stanford and Columbia Universities the Commission was very real. It is true that its work did not attract as much attention from the great metropolitan journals as did the operations of its rival, the National Labor Relations Board; but to the students who were members of its staff it provided a first-rate laboratory for the study of public administration. For that reason, a brief review of the Commission's operations may be of some interest to teachers of public administration.

Political scientists have always been interested in teaching methods; and the war and the experience gained in having to train large numbers of men for the armed services seem to have stimulated that interest. Articles which appeared in the June issue of this Review were evidence of that concern. While these articles were directed primarily toward teaching methods in political science courses generally, many of the suggestions were particularly applicable to teaching public administration. Francis Wilcox's regret that “there is one problem in particular which should give us pause, our slowness to utilize laboratory methods in political science,” is largely responsible for this article, since the operations of the Federal Labor Relations Commission were an attempt to provide such a laboratory.

Since Negro voting, or the fear of it, is the central issue around which so many other aspects of Southern politics are oriented, it is highly relevant to examine the emergence of Negro voting wherever it occurs in a Southern state. In Texas, the federal Supreme Court's “white primary” decision of April, 1944 (Smith v. Allwright), removed the most formidable barrier to Negro participation in politics and resulted in the entry of a significant number of Negroes into the electorate in 1946. Although Texas, with its relatively small Negro population (14 per cent) may not be an exact barometer to guide us in foreseeing the emergence of Negro voting elsewhere in the South, no one interested in predicting the future of this ticklish question can afford to ignore the Texas experience.

The exclusion of the Negro from Texas political life has never been complete. Texas has made use of neither the literacy or “understanding” test nor the involved registration procedures so effectively employed to limit Negro participation elsewhere in the South. In Texas, the white primary, the poll tax, and such extra-legal factors as an environment hostile to Negro assertiveness have been the only means used. The Negro has been categorically excluded only from the Democratic primary, the election that really counts. Thus, poll-tax paying Negroes have been legally eligible to vote in general elections, municipal elections, school board elections, special elections, and proposition elections concerning some special issue such as local option on liquor. Even the state-wide white primary is of fairly recent origin; it was only in 1923 that the Texas legislature passed a law barring Negroes from the Democratic primary, thus inaugurating the legal battle that produced the four Supreme Court cases on this issue.

The Constitution of the United States provides that each state shall appoint, in such manner as its legislature may direct, a number of presidential electors equal to the number of Senators and Representatives to which the state is entitled in the Congress. The Supreme Court has ruled that this clause gives the state legislature exclusive power to decide the manner of choosing electors. Before 1832, several legislatures themselves selected the members of the state's electoral college, a practice followed by South Carolina until the Civil War. As every student of American government knows, in the period from 1788 to 1832, the popular selection of electors was established and real discretion on the part of electors in choosing a President and Vice President became a legal fiction. For a century, the practice has been for the electorate to choose a set of electors, who, it is understood, will legally confirm the decision already made at the polls.

The automatic operation of the electoral college as a device for translating popular votes into electoral votes is now challenged, however, with the projection of the possibility of eighty “unpledged electors.” The governors of seven Southern states recently agreed that if the Democratic national convention nominates a presidential candidate advocating anti-segregation, anti-lynching, anti-poll tax, and fair employment practices legislation, they will attempt to keep the Democratic electoral votes of their states from being cast for such nominee. This possibility makes state laws regulating the nomination, election, and instruction of presidential electors of utmost interest and importance.

One of the happier educational products of the war was the widespread self-examination it encouraged among American colleges. With the wartime slump in enrollments, those members of the faculty who remained on the campus were commonly given the task of planning the postwar educational programs of their respective institutions. We are now in that postwar period, and much of this admirable effort has been dropped to grapple with the heavy enrollments the schools were presumably planning to meet. But in many schools, whether the curricula underwent any major operations or not, there remains a ferment of doubt and argument over the adequacy of what they are doing.

This ferment is not likely to die out soon. Colleges which brushed aside the polemics of Mr. Hutchins at Chicago a decade ago are still agitated by the Harvard Report on General Education. Harvard, like the College of the University of Chicago, is proceeding to make major departures from the prevailing practices of American colleges. Columbia College has paced the adoption of integrated courses in Western Civilization. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, guiding light of American technical schools, has discovered that engineers should also be liberally educated men and has made curricular changes designed to do something about it. The University of Florida and Michigan State College have moved sharply in the same direction, more or less independently, by creating basic colleges through which all would-be technicians and specialists must percolate before burying themselves in their chosen profession. Other schools are instituting comprehensive courses, tightening up the elective system, and otherwise taking steps to insure that general education is not lost in the scramble to prepare for a job.