The place of the Diet in the Japanese constitutional system is a subject of some controversy. Jurists of the old school, typified by the teachings of Hozumi, tend to minimize the representative character of the legislature and to magnify the limitations of its authority, while the new school, led by Minobe, stresses the possibility of parliamentary development.

The basic difference between the two schools is found in their respective attitudes toward the theory of separation of powers. Hozumi holds that the kokutai, or fundamental nature of the Japanese state, is unique. The Emperor is not merely an organ of the state. He is the state. He retains the tochi-ken, the authority of his ancestors, or sovereignty in the modern sense. The tochi-ken is supreme, perfect, and indivisible. The exercise of this authority, however, takes a three-fold form, namely, as gyosei-ken, or the executive power, rippo-ken, or the legislative power, the shiho-ken, or the judicial power.

In the juristic sphere, the Interstate Commerce Commission is charged with enforcing and interpreting certain statutes, hearing and weighing evidence, and rendering formal judgment when the facts have been ascertained. But the recognized judicial character of this work does not render the Commission immune from efforts to influence its judgments. The struggles of contending economic groups and political influences give rise to actions intolerable in a court of law and to repeated efforts to obtain favorable decisions through the use of propaganda. The Commission performs its duties in surroundings far from neutral, and must cope with pressures too powerful to be exorcised by simple exhortation or condemnation. The problem is one of canalizing influences which cannot be eliminated, to the end that they may increase rather than decrease the efficiency of the administrative process and that the public interest may not be submerged in the undertow of sectional and political cross-currents.

One of the most persistent legends in American politics is that municipal machines cannot be defeated. Yet time and again they have been split from the inside, successfully overthrown by opposition organizations, and overwhelmed by the joint action of rival political, civic, and protest groups. On many occasions the political machine of New York City has been checked, chastened, and disrupted. On November 7, the allied forces of Fusion administered a crushing defeat to the Tammany and Bronx factions of the Democratic machine in New York City. At the same time, the organized non-partisan masses in Philadelphia administered to the Republican machine there its first defeat in fifty years; while in Pittsburgh the Mellon machine succumbed to attack from the same elements. In scores of other cities the citizens rose in arms against the machines.

For fifteen years, the American public has been faced with a demand that the veterans of the World War be paid a cash gratuity for the discharge of a patriotic duty. Amendments providing for benefits, preferences, rights, or privileges are attached to bills of all descriptions in Congress. Ill-conceived marches upon Washington continue to be organized, and public speeches whet the veteran's abuse-complex. Highly paid lobbies move Congress almost at will, so that the executive stands as the public's only protection against a minority expertly organized and politically well deployed.

The two revenue-collecting services of the United States government offer interesting contrasts in the methods used for the administrative control of their respective field services. This arises in large part from the fact that the Bureau of Customs has been the more decentralized service. Ever since its establishment in 1789, and in the course of a long and continuous existence, it has built up a background of traditional decentralization which contrasts with the policy of centralization characterizing the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The latter service has a much shorter history, really beginning in 1862, although internal taxes were levied by the federal government from 1791 to 1802, and from 1813 to 1817. By virtue of the fact that Congress conferred administrative powers directly upon the commissioner of internal revenue, rather than upon the Secretary of the Treasury (as was done in the case of the customs service), a more integrated and centralized system of control has been used in the internal revenue service since the beginning of its existence.

Exceptionally rapid and drastic changes in the functional and structural aspects of the executive branch of the national government of the United States since the advent of the Roosevelt administration tend to leave the observer in a condition of bewilderment, from which he may to some degree be rescued by the guide furnished below. The outline was prepared by the staff of the Institute for Government Research of the Brookings Institution of Washington, and covers all major units of the Executive Departments with the exception of those in the Department of Justice and in the Post Office Department and those supervising the military and naval activities in the War and Navy Departments. For the Department of Justice and the Post Office Department, the supervisory units headed by the assistant attorneys-general and the assistant postmasters-general are included in the terms “Legal Services” and “Postal Services.” For the War and Navy Departments, the designations “Military Services” and “Naval Services” include all of the units supervising these branches. The outline includes also the independent establishments, and in some cases subordinate units are listed. The emergency organizations listed include only units specifically authorized by law or established by the President under general authority vested in him. There are also boards, corporations, and committees which operate with or are advisory to many of the units listed, and in addition some duties have been delegated to existing agencies which have not created separate units for extra work.

On April 6,1923, the Ohio legislature passed an act creating a Judicial Council charged with making a continuous study of the organization, rules, and methods of practice of the courts of that state, the work accomplished, and the results produced by the judicial system and its various parts. Hampered by a lack of funds during its first years of life, this body seemed destined to languish and waste away. In 1929, however, all was changed, for in that year the Council succeeded in arranging with the Institute of Law of the Johns Hopkins University for a three-year study of judicial administration in Ohio. This survey, which represented the first of a series of state-wide studies of “law-in-action” contemplated by the Institute of Law, proposed not only to organize technical research in connection with the actual operation of the courts, but to go beyond this and look into causes and effects of law administration in the social process. More specifically, it proposed, among other things: (1) to study the trends of litigation and ascertain its human causes and effects; (2) to study the machinery and functioning of the various agencies and offices which directly or indirectly have to do with the administration of law; (3) to locate precisely and definitely the reasons for delays, expenses, and uncertainty in litigation; (4) to institute a permanent system of judicial records and statistics which would automatically provide information now secured only after great labor; (5) to detect the points at which changes in substantive law would contribute markedly to social justice; and (6) to consider the results of the aforesaid analyses and make recommendations based thereon.

Contrary to expectation, widespread when the Fascists acceded to power, no notable retreat by the national government from the field of economic undertaking has been witnessed under the present Italian régime. The theoretical advocacy of public ownership of business concerns as a goal in itself has, indeed, passed entirely from the political stage with the suppression of the once powerful Socialist party, but the enterprises already operated by the Italian government have for the most part been continued under Mussolini's administration. Fascist theory concedes the private entrepreneur to be the normal and proper producer and distributor of economic goods. The Fascist attitude toward the government in business is expressed in the doctrine of state intervention. When any phase of the national economy fails to operate properly, the state has a right to intervene, even to the extent of becoming an entrepreneur itself. In the ninth declaration of the Charter of Labor, the Fascist social creed, the doctrine is expressed thus: “The intervention of the state in economic production takes place only when private initiative is lacking or is insufficient or when political interests of the state are involved. Such intervention may assume the form of control, assistance, or direct management.”

Within the past hundred years, the practice of asking questions of members of the ministry has grown up as a fixed part of the ordinary procedure of the House of Commons. Within a broad range of subjects, and governed only by a group of rules which are interpreted rather liberally by the Speaker as to subject-matter and form, each member is allowed to put three questions for oral answer on each parliamentary day except Friday, and as many for written answer as he desires. He must give a clear day's notice by handing his questions to the clerks for publication in the Orders of the Day. Questions may also be put by “private notice,” in which case, instead of printed notice, the member gives written notice to the minister concerned and to the Speaker. With permission of the Speaker and the indulgence of the House, inquiries on matters of current public interest are sometimes made without any formal notice.