The Supreme Court of the United States during its 1925 term seems to have taken a vacation from the solution of major constitutional problems. Its activities provided very little newspaper copy. Most of the more important decisions could have been pretty accurately forecast upon the basis of previous adjudications, while the constitutional questions raised which could be deemed in any sense novel related to more or less technical or trivial matters. A considerable number of the more interesting cases dealt merely with matters of statutory construction and did not present constitutional issues at all. This comparative dullness of the judicial year's work is in sharp contrast with the achievements of the preceding term of 1924, in which at least six cases of genuinely first-rate importance were decided; while the Court has begun its 1926 term by handing down its epoch-making decision in the Myers case relating to the President's power of removal, and has followed it by the far-reaching ruling in the municipal zoning law case. This absence of judicial fireworks in the 1925 term may well serve to emphasize two facts sometimes overlooked in an appraisal of the work of the Supreme Court. The first is that in any judicial year an overwhelming proportion of the work of that tribunal is and must necessarily be of a humdrum and inconspicuous variety; useful and important in the sense that technical, detailed, and even trivial questions need to be answered authoritatively, but certainly not spectacular.

The past year of Japanese politics has witnessed several developments in parliamentary government, prominent among which are the contest between the privy council and the cabinet, the question of the reform of the Peers, and the reorganization and growth of parties on the eve of the first general election under the manhood suffrage law.

During the greater part of this time, the Wakatsuki ministry was in office. The strong leader of the Kenseikai, Viscount Kato, who had been called to form a coalition cabinet after the fall of the super-party cabinet of Kiyoura, died in January, 1926. The succeeding premior, Reijiro Wakatsuki, was a man of less prestige. Even before Kate's death, the alliance of all parties in the House of Representatives was dissolved and the Seiyukai and the Jitsugyo Doshikai, or Business-man's party, assumed the rôle of opposition parties.

For the second time within twelve months, the continuing parliamentary tangle in Canada gave rise, on September 14, 1926, to a general election which not only was one of the most bitterly contested in years, but was focused, on the surface at least, upon a constitutional crisis without precedent in the history of the dominion. The outcome, however, proved to be considerably more decisive than the conflict of a year before, the Liberal party winning 119 seats—only four short of a clear majority in the House of Commons—which, with its Progressive and farmer allies, should mean that it will be able to restore relatively stable party government to Canada for the next few years.

The events of the past five years in China furnish abundant evidence of the economic background of politics. Hostility between British Hongkong and Chinese Canton may be said to date from the Hongkong seamen's strike of 1922, and it will be remembered that the Shanghai disturbance of 1925, with the resulting popular disorders in other parts of the country, arose out of a series of strikes in Japanese-owned cotton mills of the city. Moreover, the spectacular progress of the Nationalist movement during the past two years is due in no small degree to the widespread economic unrest produced by chronic civil war, interrupted communications within the country, depreciated currencies, unfavorable conditions in the factories, and steadily mounting price levels.

The third of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's “Three Principles of the People,” on which the Nationalist movement as a whole rests, is concerned with economic conditions. The first of the three principles is Ming Zoh, meaning a race or a people, and it is used in connection with the right of a people to exist on a footing of equality with other races or peoples. The prestige enjoyed by Soviet Russia in Kuomintang circles is directly traceable to the willingness of Russia to recognize this principle of Ming Zoh, thereby dealing with the Chinese as the Russians' racial and national equals.

The German commonwealth is a federation of states, each operating under its own constitution and laws; though subject to the national constitution, which is the fundamental law of the commonwealth, and to other national laws and ordinances. Hence the general problem of judicial review over legislative acts, in so far as it relates to the central government, includes (a) the question of the right of judicial review of state constitutional provisions or state laws and ordinances, when in conflict with the national constitution, laws, or ordinances, and (b) the question of the right of judicial review in respect to national laws, as against the national constitution.

The election of Field Marshal von Hindenburg to the presidency in succession to Ebert in 1925 was at first interpreted by Republicans in Germany, and by many foreign observers, as a distinct political blunder. He was pictured as the very embodiment of pre-war Germany with its ultra-nationalistic and militaristic ideals. It was freely prophesied that all the labors of Marx and Stresemann, MacDonald and Herriot, which had held out the promise that Germany might soon be restored to good standing in the family of nations, would come to naught because of this new manifestation of German incorrigibility. These prophecies, however, have certainly not been fulfilled. Hindenburg has thus far encouraged rather than opposed the efforts of Stresemann to reëstablish an understanding with the Allies, and has undoubtedly gained the approval of millions of Germans who fought bitterly against him during the presidential campaign.

On June 20, 1926, for the first time in history, a large nation made a trial of direct democracy. On that day the German electors were summoned to the polls to pass judgment upon the question of the expropriation of the property of the ex-rulers. The measure voted upon was worded in an extreme fashion, as the leaders of the Left, who framed it, felt that it was necessary to obtain a clear answer to the exorbitant demands made by the fallen dynasties. Although the princes had been given large indemnities by various states, several of them had brought suits for larger claims and had won. Created as they were by the old régime, the courts had very often refused to distinguish between the private property of the princes and the property of the state. By reason of the court decisions, the German people were in danger of losing not only considerable sums of money but inestimable art treasures as well. It was this situation that gave the Communists and Socialists an opportunity to demand popular support for complete confiscation of the princes' property.

Early in 1926, Premier Mussolini revived the long dormant office of podestà for the municipalities of Italy. Thenceforth the term has been frequently before the public. What is this office? And what is the significance of reviving a long forgotten term as its title?

Divorced from the specialized significance that it had in Italy, the term was used in many places and times, ranging from the fringe of Roman antiquity down to the present day. The word itself, of course, is nothing but the Italian form of the good classical Latin potestas, with its simple meaning of “power.” We may be inclined to believe that the use of such an abstract term to signify the officer who held the “power” in city administration is a late development; yet there is an isolated example in Juvenal (lst-2nd cent, A.D.) where such a usage occurs. Juvenal is discoursing on the vanities of human desires, and is pointing specifically to the downfall of Sejanus, when he asks, “Would you rather choose to wear the bordered robe of the man now being dragged through the streets, or to be a magistrate at (the little towns of) Fidenae or Gabii, rendering judgment on weights and measures?” Some three centuries later, Possidius, in his life of St. Augustine, uses the term in connection with the Donatist controversy.

The county of Allegheny comprises the heart of the Pittsburgh district as usually understood, and includes the city itself, termed by the laws of the commonwealth a city of the second class; three cities of the third class, i.e., McKeesport, Clairton, and Duquesne; sixty-six boroughs and fifty-four townships (of which twenty-five are townships of the first class, governed by a board of commissioners, and twenty-nine are townships of the second class, under the control of a board of supervisors). During the years 1925–26, the boroughs of Carrick, Knoxville, and Westwood and the township of Lower St. Clair have, by the voluntary act of their people, united with the city of Pittsburgh. There are now existing within the county of Allegheny a total of one hundred twenty-four separate municipal units (exclusive of school districts), each operating under its own particular form of government.

On November 7 Greece held its first general election under the system of proportional representation, using a modified form of the Belgian system. This innovation was imposed on the country despite the most strenuous opposition by all of the old parties, the majority of the press, and the bulk of public opinion, and its adoption was a clear victory of the minority parties, assisted by the Military League and the then dictator General Kondylis.

The arguments of the established parties in favor of the old plurality system ran on lines too familiar to require extensive statement here. The former system, according to its supporters, usually assures the election of large majorities, one way or the other, and enables Parliament to give the country what we call a strong government, such as Greece needed at the time of the election. Great Britain and the United States were offered as the outstanding examples of the efficiency of the two-party system, which is best served by the old-fashioned electoral method of absolute plurality. Naturally enough, Belgium was cited as the worst exponent of the evils of proportional representation.