Since the English Revolution of 1688, it has been a part of the Anglo-American tradition that elected representative assemblies control the policies and acts of the executive branch of the government. This doctrine was firmly embedded in the American state and federal constitutions. With some wartime reservations, it has been universally accepted throughout our country. At the present time, however, there is an uneasy feeling that practice does not square with theory. There is even a suspicion that practice contradicts theory—that a vast body of officials has in fact escaped the possibility of control by the people's representatives.

The trends of the last half-century have certainly complicated the problem of congressional authority over administration. This has occurred in part because administration has made impressive gains in effective organization and operation, while relatively Congress has stood still. Within the administrative system there has developed a capacity for self-direction which might well challenge the dominance of Congress, if Congress continues to be the laggard partner in the governmental team.

“Right without Might is weakness,” wrote Blaise Pascal three centuries ago. But “Might without Right is tyranny. We must therefore combine Right and Might, making what is Right mighty and what is mighty Right.” To achieve such a combination in the community of nations is, by common consent, the major problem of world politics in our time. Outside of the dwindling ranks of the anarchists, few would any longer dispute the propositions that peace among men is unattainable without the organization of men into government, possessed of effective power to enforce law, and that justice among men is unattainable without the subordination of government itself to law, reflecting men's conception of right. How these goals are to be reached among nations is still a matter of controversy. But after participating in two world wars against tyrants, dedicated to world unity through conquest, most Americans are now agreed that peace and justice among nations depend upon order and law among nations and that these, in turn, depend upon the efficacy of what has long been called “international organization” or, more optimistically, “international government.”

The Great Debate of 1944–45, like that of 1919–20, is not over ends, but over means. How can an effective world organization be brought into being, and how can it be made to function for the maintenance of peace, the enforcement of law, and the achievement of justice? In an age whose slogan in grappling with its most fateful problems has too often been “too little and too late,” it is not strange that American discussion of the problem of world order has largely taken the form of old disputes as to the terms upon which the United States should assume membership in an association or league of nations to keep the peace. The tacit assumption behind the discussion is that such a partnership of sovereignties can and will keep peace, enforce law, and promote justice if only it be organized with sufficient cleverness and joined by a sufficient number of states.

In certain sections of the daily press, and even in some scientific writings, one may find expressed fears that the United States faces a period of class struggle and revolutionary violence in which the Communist party will pay a prominent rôle. This is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that the Communist party of the USA has not engaged in revolutionary propaganda for the past eight years, and indeed abandoned the last slight remnant of revolutionary ideology in January, 1944. Nor does a Marxist revolution appear likely to arise from other sources. The only leftist groups that might with some accuracy be termed revolutionary, the two leading Trotskyite factions and the Revolutionary Workers League, the Socialist Labor party, the Proletarian party, and the Industrial Workers of the World, do little more today than engage in obscure polemics with one another. Their very names are unknown except to specialists. The Socialist party and its right wing splinter, the Social Democratic Federation, have long since abandoned revolutionary propaganda and confined themselves to reform within the present social structure. Thus at present no group that shows signs of growth is openly propagandizing for a Marxist revolution, and hence no promising focal point exists for an organized revolutionary movement based on the Marxist theory of the class struggle.

The reasons for the disappearance of Marxist revolutionary ideology, and the probabilities of its future recurrence in the United States, present a scientific problem that has received relatively little non-partisan investigation. As it is impossible to discuss in brief compass all of the factors that might lead to revolutionary disturbances, in this paper the analysis will be limited to the Communist party of the USA, as the most significant proponent of this point of view in recent times.

During the 1943–44 term of the Supreme Court, public attention was attracted to that body on several occasions by verbal exchanges in decisions of the Court which seemed unusually sharp and personal. On January 3, 1944, Justices Black and Murphy admonished Justice Frankfurter that “for judges to rest their interpretation of statutes on nothing but their own conceptions of ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ is, to say the least, dangerous business.” In another opinion on the same day, the same two judges referred to “what is patently a wholly gratuitous assertion as to constitutional law in the dissent of Mr. Justice Frankfurter.” In the Magnolia Petroleum Co. case, Justice Jackson observed that the minority judges were apparently willing to enforce the full faith and credit clause “only if the outcome pleases….” Justice Murphy told the Court on one occasion that it was “rewriting” a criminal statute, Justice Jackson called the decision bringing insurance under the Sherman Act a “reckless” one, and Justice Roberts several times waxed sarcastic about the disregarding or over-ruling of precedents. “This tendency,” he said, “indicates an intolerance for what those who have composed this court in the past have conscientiously and deliberately concluded, and involves an assumption that knowledge and wisdom reside in us which was denied to our predecessors.” It is not surprising that the newspapers translated these disagreements into personal terms and began to write about the “feud that was smoldering behind the Grecian columns of the white marble court building.”

There are many reasons for not taking such accounts too seriously. Thomas Reed Powell has wisely warned “laymen … not to draw too broad conclusions from any reportorial propensity to play up judicial disagreements as contests like those in war or sports.” Disagreement is no new thing on the Court. The faultless phrasing of the Holmes dissents may have raised to a higher plane, but did not conceal, differences as sharp as any evident during the past term.

The paragraphs that follow answer the same questions with respect to unconstitutional legislation by Congress that were answered with respect to unconstitutional legislation in the ten states (Colorado, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, and New York) included in my study published in 1943 under the title, Unconstitutional Legislation in Ten Selected States. The congressional statutes and the decisions of the Supreme Court analyzed herein are based upon the list found in Professor Charles Grove Haines, The Doctrine of American Judicial Supremacy. The reason why this list was chosen as the basis for analysis was that it covers approximately the same period, namely, from the beginnings to the early thirties, not including the period of the New Deal which formally began in 1933. This does not mean that there is no point in analyzing the later statutes and decisions, but that for purposes of comparison it was thought safer to restrict this analysis to the same general period for both state and national materials. The three cases under No. 1 in the Haines list have been omitted because no decrees based on invalidity followed their decision.

A new constitution will be submitted to the voters of Missouri at a special election on February 27, 1945. It was drafted by a bi-partisan convention which met on September 21, 1943, and adjourned sine die on September 29, 1944, after spending 215 days in session. The convention was authorized by the voters, under the twenty-year rule, in November, 1943, and 68 senatorial district delegates and 15 delegates-at-large were elected in April, 1943. One of the latter, an anti-New Deal Democrat, was agreed upon by the state committees of both major parties, and later became president of the convention.

The great majority of delegates were conservative, but constructive in their attitude. They expressed confidence in the voters and in local self-government, and insisted on definitely checking all public officials and agencies. In general, the more liberal delegates were older men, with long and distinguished records of public service and without further political aspirations; the more conservative delegates were generally younger men, with less political experience. A bare majority were lawyers. The others represented some twenty different business and professional groups, including four college professors and two women.

An important innovation in the method of filling elective offices in multiple-member districts, applicable to the federal, state, and local governments alike, was inaugurated in Oregon in 1893 by an act providing that the several judges of the circuit court for Multnomah county should be elected by “departments,” consecutively numbered. Similar action was taken in the casé of the district court for Multnomah county in 1913. Likewise, an act of 1929 provides that the offices of the seven judges of the supreme court shall constitute seven “positions” and be so indicated on the ballot. The charter of the city of Portland was amended in 1934 to apply the “position” principle to the four city commissioners. Next, the three circuit judges of the second district became elective by “positions” in 1935, and so, in 1941, did the two circuit judges of Linn county. At the 1941 session of the legislature, a futile attempt was made to do the same thing for the thirteen members of the state house of representatives from Multnomah county.

When the voters of any district are limited to the selection of a single officer, the “short ballot” simplifies the voters' task in choosing from among candidates at the election, prevents the “single-shotting” more or less prevalent in multiple districts, and discourages small pluralities. But in reducing these difficulties, it at the same time promotes others. In case of any office, the narrow range of choice is likely to reduce the quality of the officers. When the office is legislative, the incumbent is likely to be “district-minded” and “machine-controlled,” and so to neglect the general interests for those of the district or those of the local politicians. Such considerations were urged in favor of the compromise involved in the “position” method employed for the Portland commissioners and the representatives from Multnomah county; and they are, of course, applicable, in a degree, to the judges.

World War II has called forth greater organizational and administrative efforts than ever before on the part of the armed forces, private industry, and government. The sheer size of the new organizations that were formed to fight battles, manufacture matériel, and administer government programs has intensified the problems of top management and executive control, as well as the technical problems of military operations, supply, and industrial production. Great dynamic changes in society always afford occasion for reappraising basic philosophies, and these significant changes in the scope and scale of our great enterprises are no exception. The field of management is perhaps less spectacular, less open to popular discussion than are the issues of foreign policy and of government participation in the national economy. But effective management of our enterprise is of fundamental importance to a successful conclusion of the war and subsequent maintenance of peace. The demands of the war on the home front have stimulated much re-thinking of the theories of government and business administration. This article is concerned with the relation between the basic theories of two of the greatest contributors to the field of management—Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol.

We all know what the task of organizing for war has been during the past four years. Arms production of undreamed of magnitude had to be developed in a matter of months. To produce the vast number of planes, tanks, and ships, new enterprises sprang up over night and existing ones expanded to many times their original size. Similarly, the federal government, in addition to creating tremendous staffs in the War and Navy Departments, had to develop quickly “administrative leviathans” to control prices and ration goods, allocate industrial production, and direct the production and distribution of foods. War-time control had to be exercised to an unprecedented degree, frequently for hitherto unregulated matters, in connection with oil, censorship, transportation, manpower, and the like. Besides a need for more technical personnel in industrial production, there developed a need for people able to organize and direct large new enterprises.

“Industrial management” and “efficiency engineering” have become by-words in private business; in the field of public administration, we hear of “control.” The second World War has given great impetus to the development of effective practices in “management” or “control” in government departments.

As soon as the news of Pearl Harbor electrified the United States, armament production was expanded overnight to the limit of the country's resources. Pursuant to the defense program, the Department of War constructed not only many munitions plants, the great majority of them operated by private concerns under cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts, but also numerous storage depots and other installations owned by the Department of War and operated for the most part by its Ordnance Department, a division of the Army Service Forces.

During the initial months of the war, the problem uppermost in the minds of those who were directing the nation's defense program was how to achieve mass production of arms—a goal doubly difficult to reach because of the need of using entirely new techniques of manufacture. Not until the problem of quantity production was solved could attention be concentrated on obtaining maximum efficiency in operations. Swift expansion in any productive activity will by its very nature arrive at that point of unwieldiness where streamlining becomes imperative. Furthermore, because of the labor shortage, which grew more acute with the induction of increasing numbers of young men into the fighting forces, consideration of the efficiency of war plants early became mandatory.

Writers on the constitutional aspect of the Vichy régime in France have now shifted the focus of their attention. In the beginning they were concerned almost exclusively with the study of how far the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, did or did not square with the constitution of the Third Republic. Later publications broached the question as to whether, assuming the legitimacy of the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, Marshal Pétain's government, by its actions under the cover of that Enabling Act, had remained within the scope of the authority conferred by that measure. Pierre Tissier, the author of the most comprehensive published study of the Vichy régime, argues that for a correct construction of the Enabling Act the ratification “by the nation” of the new constitution must be considered as a condition precedent, in the technical meaning of that term, rather than as a condition subsequent. He further points out that since this refers to a temporary change of the constitution, as well as to a permanent one, the pretended and self-styled “constitutional acts” of Marshal Pétain, even though he himself ascribed to them only an interim character, were merely “so many coups de force.” According to the same author, a comparison between the powers delegated to the Marshal by the National Assembly of Vichy and the use he made of them leads to the conclusion that his government “betrayed its own solemn engagements.” Tissier charges the Marshal also with an “abuse of power.” Similarly, another French author of a pertinent monograph makes the emphatic statement that the constitutional acts of the Pétain régime, “despite their name, were really abuses of power,” since the mandate conferred by the National Assembly “was not—despite all that has been reported—a blank check,” and the conditions for putting into effect any constitutional act have so far not been met.

Within the last few years, changes have been carried out in the public administration of Germany which will affect the military government to be established during and after Germany's defeat. Their general trend has been to subordinate state (i.e., Reich, regional, and local) administration to the Party, which has been vested with more and more power. This is of particular interest in the light of the present “total mobilization,” in which the Party plays a dominant part. To some extent, the changes discussed in this note show a definite trend toward decentralization, although there has been no actual delegation of powers to smaller units, since all power remained in the hands of the Party—this being, of course, the reason why the Nazis could afford to “decentralize.” On the local level, the reforms aimed at tying together the loosening bonds between the régime and the people. Only the most recent emergency measures of “total mobilization” are touched on in this note.

1. Gauarbeitsaemter. When the Reichsanstalt was created in 1927–28, the Reich was organized in 13 economic regions, each having one regional labor office (Landesarbeitsamt). The idea was to establish large economic districts containing various industries so that a crisis in one industry could be absorbed by the labor market of another within the same district, thus creating “ausgleichsfaehige Bezirke.”

Many times we have been told that the United States led the League in dealing with the Manchurian Affair of 1931. The statement is essentially false, but contains an element of truth in that the League did defer to the United States. It recognized that it could accomplish nothing in the Far East without American support and played for that support, but without getting it at the critical points. The United States Government did not lead—rather it deliberately chose to follow; it refused coöperation with the proposed first effort of the League; it supported, if it did not lead, the abandonment of the immediate issue represented by the Resolution of December 10 and the appointment of the Lytton Commission; and its leadership was clear only in the final substantive surrender represented by the Non-Recognition Policy.