bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Natural Law: A Functional Interpretation
Authors: Inlow Burke 
Published: May 2006

This study represents a preliminary inquiry into certain of the functional aspects of the natural law doctrine, particularly as it applies to American constitutional development. Throughout, the conceptual considerations, as such, will be ignored. Instead, the basic consideration will be one of usage. How does natural law work? What does it do? If this distinction seems arbitrary, the writer can only point out that law and politics are not theoretical studies; that they are the bone and sinew of society; that if the social order is to serve humanity with the greatest possible direction, it should know the proper functioning of its constituent elements. Natural law, like atomic energy, is important because it works, not because it was invented. And by the same token, it is best understood by a respectable familiarity with its usage, not by memorizing the symbols of its essence.The easy identification of natural law with the constitutional development of this country is apparent from even a cursory examination of the great body of constitutional doctrine. We have, for example, the whole concept of property relationships as they have come to us from the eighteenth century. We have a similar form-pattern in the development of certain processes of the law itself. We talk of the “reasonable man,” or we invoke the “rule of reason.” But the decisive characteristic of American constitutional development has been none of these. Rather it has been the acceptance of the working principle of negation. To avoid an enactment or a statute is considered, in this country at least, a valid exercise of authority. While it might be difficult to seek the legitimate derivation of such an action, or even to justify it, it is possible to consider its assumptions.
A New Approach to Federal Executive Reorganization
Authors: Heady Ferrel 
Published: May 2006

The recurring problem of executive reorganization once again has become a major issue. One reason is the recognition in all quarters of the desirability of a thorough overhauling of the vast federal administrative structure which mushroomed necessarily under pressure of the war emergency, and of the necessity for a reconversion of the executive organization to a peacetime basis. Another incentive to renewed concern is the urgency of assuring organizational efficiency for the translation into effective action of national policies undertaken as the result of our enlarged domestic and international responsibilities in the postwar period. Furthermore, the particular interest shown by the present Congress in the reduction of governmental expenditures has helped focus attention on the question of economy in governmental operations. The fact that a decade has passed since the last frontal attack on the problem lends support to the demand for a new drive toward reform.Unfortunately, the revival of interest in a comprehensive reorganization movement comes at a time when the prospect for success in such an undertaking seems, on the surface at least, to be unusually dim. Even under the most favorable circumstances, large-scale executive reorganization involves formidable difficulties. However initiated, a reorganization program must be sanctioned by the enactment of authorizing legislation. This is a hazardous task, demanding mutual confidence and an acceptable working relationship between the legislature and the executive.
County and Township Government in 1946
Authors: Snider Clyde F. , Garvey Neil F. 
Published: May 2006

The first postwar year found rural local government facing problems of readjustment. As the rural units had felt the impact of war less forcefully than the states and cities, so their reconstruction problems were less acute; but they were none the less genuine and significant. To mention but a few, these included the construction of deferred public-works projects, the provision of housing and various forms of assistance for returned veterans, the modernization and expansion of public-welfare services, the securing of additional revenues adequate to finance an expanded program of local activities, and the reorganization of local areas and machinery with a view to fostering economy and efficiency in a period of mounting governmental costs. Though less than a dozen state legislatures held regular sessions, the year's enactments served both to initiate reconstruction programs begun a year earlier in many states and to indicate the nature of other measures likely to be more generally adopted in the future. Statutes of previous years formed the basis of various improvements in local government which were effected in 1946.The school-consolidation programs begun in the preceding year in Illinois and Kansas continued to make progress. At the beginning of October, 174 consolidations involving 897 districts had been effected in Illinois. In Kansas, some 2,000 districts have already been eliminated, and it has been estimated that the program in that state, as revised early in 1947, may ultimately reduce the number of districts, originally well over 8,000, to only 3,000.
III. The Power to Regulate Commerce
Authors: Barnett Vincent M. 
Published: May 2006

The commerce clause has been a double-edged tool of constitutional interpretation from the earliest days of judicial review of state and federal legislative activity. It is at once a positive source of federal power and, in the absence of federal exercise of that power, a source of implied limitations on state legislation. Any consideration of trends of interpretation of the clause in the past decade must treat both aspects of the matter. In general, it may be said that expansive implications of the Wagner Act decisions in the spring of 1937 have been elaborated and broadened until the commerce clause is today an ample source of federal legislative authority to deal with a wide range of problems arising out of or having any substantial effect upon interstate commerce. No such clear generalization may be made with respect to the nature of the limitations which the unexercised commerce power imposes on state police power and tax legislation. But the tendency, not yet consistently dominant, seems to be in the direction of upholding much state legislation that would formerly have been ruled a burden on interstate commerce. It is, of course, unnecessary to labor the fact that state legislation incompatible with a valid federal exercise of the commerce power is unconstitutional.Both the above generalizations require some further examination. The first can perhaps best be looked at in terms of (1) changing definitions of interstate commerce, (2) the reshaping of familiar formulæ for determining the reach of the power to regulate, (3) the abandonment of the “dual federalism” concept, and (4) the broad application of federal statutes to businesses alleged not to be in interstate commerce. Discussion of the second general problem may perhaps best be considered in terms of the gradual, and still wavering, emergence of what may be called the “leaveit-to-Congress trend” in the review of state legislation alleged to burden interstate commerce.
Toward a More Integrated Political Science Curriculum
Authors: Rockwell Landon G. 
Published: May 2006

Recent concern with the liberal arts curriculum as evinced by the report of the Harvard committee on General Education in a Free Society, Colgate's adoption of a core curriculum, and a thorough reëxamination of their entire educational program by scores of other institutions sharpens the recurrent problem of attempting better integration within the constituent parts of the curriculum. Whenever political scientists, talking shop, lapse into general principles, there is inevitable discussion concerning the nature and focus of political science itself. Much hard thinking has been done on the subject. There is, however, as in every profession where individual specialties are earnestly pursued, a tendency toward intellectual myopia, a tendency to miss, by default rather than consciously, a synoptic view of the subject. This has resulted in a lack of integration, of comprehensive design, of sense of balanced purpose, in many political science curricula.The miscellany of unrelated, overlapping courses which one sometimes encounters in college or university catalogues, to say nothing of the neglect of important aspects of government, indicates that the political science curriculum has received inadequate analysis. Political scientists who teach are educators as well, and thereby have a dual professional responsibility to present their field of inquiry as an integrated, comprehensive whole, elucidated by specific course offerings. Only thus can political science realize its richest contribution to liberal education as well as to an understanding of the political process within and beyond academic halls.
State Legislatures and Communism: The Current Scene
Authors: Prendergast William B. 
Published: May 2006

The prosecution of the cold war on the domestic front was a major concern of the state legislatures which convened in 1949. Quantitatively, last year's output of state laws against subversive movements surpassed that of any other year in our history except 1919. It was a rare hopper which did not receive at least a sprinkling of bills of this sort. And the fact that no more than fifteen states enacted anti-Communist laws can be attributed in large part to the inability of lawmakers to think of restrictive measures which an earlier legislature had not already placed on the statute books.As 1950 began, Maine alone among the states was without a law designed specifically to repress or combat subversive organizations or individuals. Thirty-eight states at that date had criminal statutes prohibiting acts of violence and utterances urging violence for the purpose of effecting political or economic change. Although Tennessee's Sedition Act goes back to 1715 and two other states enacted similar statutes in the nineteenth century, these laws are for the most part products of the present century.
Hume and Conservatism
Authors: Wolin Sheldon S. 
Published: May 2006

Although David Hume's stature as a philosopher has rarely been questioned, his claims as a political theorist have fared less well. Jefferson showed deep hostility towards Hume's ideas, while John Adams could find agreement with only a few points. Later opinion has been less vehement but still reserved. Thomas Huxley thought Hume's political writings suggestive, but on the whole marred by an unabashed desire for literary success. In Sir Leslie Stephen's judgment Hume was guilty of a “cynical conservatism” that was at once superficial and unhistorical.More recent studies, such as those of Sabine and Halévy, have established more securely Hume's place in political thought but have left certain ambiguities. Sabine has coupled Hume with Burke as an opponent of eighteenth-century rationalism, while Halévy viewed him as a forerunner of the “philosophical radicalism” of Bentham, Adam Smith, James Mill, and Ricardo. To have fathered squabbling children is always something of an embarrassment, but particularly so when one is, like Hume, temperamentally averse to taking sides. It is true, nonetheless, that if a temporary distinction is made between Hume's doctrine and his influence, it is possible to maintain that his influence worked in two quite different directions. His inquires into causation, the role of reason, and the nature of moral judgments helped eventually to undermine the natural law structure of eighteenth-century liberalism, while his emphasis on utility as the test of institutions contributed an important ingredient to Benthamite liberalism.
Presidency and Legislation: The Growth of Central Clearance
Authors: Neustadt Richard E. 
Published: May 2006

Ten months after President Eisenhower's inaugural, an article in Fortune extolled a presidential aide in terms which would have seemed familiar ten months before; the picture of his role in Eisenhower's entourage might easily have been drawn in President Truman's time. The subject of this piece was Roger W. Jones, an Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget and chief of its Office of Legislative Reference. In Fortune's terms, here was a confidential, if “non-political,” member of the White House circle performing tasks of great importance to the President, trusted, respected, and relied upon by all of his associates. As an analysis of governmental functions and relationships, this testimonial was scarcely definitive, but its mere publication testifies to the continuation of the Budget Bureau's so-called legislative clearance operations, handily surviving the Great Transition of 1953.What are these clearance operations? Essentially they amount to central coordination and review of stands taken by the various federal agencies at three successive stages of the legislative process.
The Parliamentary Labor Party in Great Britain
Authors: Burns James Macgregor 
Published: May 2006

Who rules Britain? For the political scientist hunting out the real core of power, the question is hard to answer. Students of British politics have variously concluded that the Cabinet, or Parliament, or the party in power, or the administrative class of civil servants, or the “Big Three” (or Four, or Five)—or some combination of these—actually held the reins of authority. Constitutionally, however, the question is an easy one. Formal power rests with a majority of the Members of Parliament. This majority can pass laws and raise money, can bring down governments and make new ones, can change the Constitution itself.Those who have ruled Britain in this sense during the past five years have been a few hundred Labor Members of the House of Commons, organized in the Parliamentary Labor Party. Constitutionally, this is the ruling group, every member of which has equal power. In fact, a small minority of Labor Members, grouped in or about the Cabinet, actually make the great decisions of state. At the same time, the large majority of Labor Members not only lack real power but even in their very name —Backbenchers—they appear as the symbols of impotence.
The Role of Contemporary Political Parties in Chile
Authors: Abbott Roger S. 
Published: May 2006

Chile, along with Uruguay, is generally considered to have the most democratic of the present governments of Latin America, as well as one possessing a relatively high degree of political stability. Under a constitutional framework instituted in 1925 to remedy shortcomings of the preceding “parliamentary” government (1891-1925), Chile is now operating under a “presidential” type of government.During the period prior to 1925, 138 ministries passed fleetingly across the governmental stage, including one whose role lasted less than twenty-four hours. More significant, however, than the rapid rotation of ministers during the parliamentary era were the insufficiency of executive power and the marked lack of legislative concern not only for cabinet stability but even for the performance of essential governmental functions. The most serious result of this congressional attitude was legislative stagnation, highlighted by the frequent failure of the Congress to approve the budget and enact other necessary measures. Accordingly, it was intended, in framing a new basic charter for Chile, to enhance the position of the chief executive, to increase ministerial stability, and to provide for greater legislative responsibility, at least to the extent of assuring a minimum law-making job. To what extent have these ends been achieved, and how does the presidential system operate in Chile?
Constitutional Law in 1953–1954
Authors: Fellman David 
Published: May 2006

The membership of the Supreme Court remained unchanged during the 1953 Term. Chief Justice Vinson died on September 8, shortly before the opening of the Term. Governor Earl Warren of California was given a recess appointment by President Eisenhower on October 2, and was sworn in as the fourteenth Chief Justice on October 5. The Senate Judiciary Committee moved slowly, however, and the appointment did not reach the Senate until March 1, 1954, when it was confirmed by a voice vote without opposition.A week after the 1954 Term got under way Justice Robert H Jackson died, of a heart attack, on October 9, 1954, at the age of 62. For a man who had no law degree, Justice Jackson had done very well in the law. After a brilliant career as a lawyer in Jamestown, New York, he entered the government service in 1934 as General Counsel to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1938, Attorney-General in 1940, and was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt in June, 1941. He served as chief American prosecutor at the Nürnberg trial of top Nazi war criminals. Though appointed with the reputation of being a liberal New Dealer, Justice Jackson was actually close to the very center of the Court in many cases where the Justices were sharply divided. He was one of the most gifted opinion-writers on the Court, with a flair for felicitous phrasing and well-turned epigrams. To take the place of Justice Jackson, President Eisenhower nominated, on November 8, 1954, Judge John Marshall Harlan, whom he had appointed the previous March to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Harlan, once a successful New York lawyer, is the grandson of the Justice Harlan who served with such distinction from 1877 to 1911.
Treasury Control: The Coordination of Financial Policy in Great Britain
Authors: Beer Samuel H. 
Published: May 2006

Any account of British government will lay stress on the power and importance of the Treasury. But although the parliamentary side of British finance has been fully described in various works, very little has been written about what goes on in this field within the administration and in particular about the operations of the Treasury. What precisely does the Treasury do and how does it do it?The typical business of the Treasury is the control of certain activities of other departments. It is, in the words of one of its former high officials, “the traditional coordinating department.” That does not mean that the Treasury coördinates the whole of Government policy. No single staff agency in British administration can claim so large a duty, unless we take in earnest those civil servants who lump together as one entity the Treasury, the Lord President's Office, and the Cabinet Office under the irreverent title of “The Great George Street Front.” Through the Treasury, however, various large aspects of policy are concerted and controlled, and by a study of its operations we may get some idea of how the business of coördination is carried on under Britain's peculiar plural executive.
Cohesion of British Parliamentary Parties
Authors: Epstein Leon D. 
Published: May 2006

In the perspective of those political scientists who would reform American parties so as to make them more “responsible,” British parties are familiar prototypes. Prominent among the admired qualities is the cohesion displayed in parliamentary voting by the members of each major British party. That this cohesion is greater than that of American legislative parties has been generally observed at least since the work of A. Lawrence Lowell. And it is common enough, though not universal, to regard British parliamentary solidarity as a virtue particularly because it permits a victorious party, after an election, to enact the program behind which a majority of voters have presumably been rallied. Correspondingly, the relatively low cohesion among Republican and among Democratic congressmen is taken as a defect of American politics.The purpose of this article, however, is not primarily to discuss value judgments concerning parliamentary cohesion. Rather it is to examine the nature of that cohesion and the ways in which it is maintained. But regardless of the disputed merits of British practice, it is still reasonable to ask after such an examination whether the cohesion of party members in the House of Commons is the product of devices which the United States could adopt, or whether it is the result of underlying factors alien to the American environment.
Interpersonal Freedom and Freedom of Action
Authors: Oppenheim Felix E. 
Published: May 2006

When speaking of freedom, La Bruyère's word comes to mind—that everything has been said and that we come too late to add anything. Yet an analysis of the concept of freedom may be warranted for the very reason that it is being used by everyone to refer to whatever he considers valuable, from obedience to law (positive or natural) to autonomy and economic abundance. I believe that it is possible to assign to “freedom” in its different aspects meanings which are emotively neutral and operationally testable, and thereby to rescue for the social sciences generally and for political science in particular an important set of concepts, closely related as they are to those of power and control.One would have to start with disentangling the widely different senses in which “freedom” is being used indiscriminately. I shall deal with freedom in only two of its many meanings, interpersonal freedom and freedom of action. One of the difficulties will be to steer a middle course between the vagueness of conversational language and the awkwardness of a precise terminology; but I hope to demonstrate that such an endeavor is no idle exercise in semantics but a necessary prerequisite for the fruitful investigation of social and political phenomena.
Political Science and Political Theory
Authors: Smith David G. 
Published: May 2006

Among political scientists, even among political theorists, there is a widespread conviction that political theory has entered upon a time of troubles. Few, however, regard it simply as a “dead dog,” and political theorists continue, as they should, to administer critical self-analysis, and to define and defend their methodological and philosophical positions. The basis for a unity of opposites is still a subject for dispute. This paper is offered, not as a solution, but as a statement of one conception of the role of political theory.A time-honored technique of dialectic is to seek well-reasoned objections to the view one does not hold. A medicine often commended to the political scientists is a body of systematic, scientific theory akin to economic theory in approach and methodological sophistication. Accordingly, this article takes issue with that interpretation which conceives of political theory as, ideally, the master discipline whereby the science of politics is to be unified and systematized, and empirical investigation oriented and guided. A few definite and carefully developed proposals for reconstruction along these lines, familar to political scientists, are G. E. G. Catlin's The Science and Method of Politics, Harold D. Lasswell's and Abraham Kaplan's Power and Society, and David Easton's The Political System. These works can serve as an initial point of purchase for analysis and discussion.