During the last few decades, legal theorists have given increased attention to the relationship between municipal and international law. Few have attacked the problem with greater acumen than Alfred Verdross, who belongs to that school of Austrians, sometimes referred to as legal purists, with which the names of Hans Kelsen and Fritz Sander are so prominently associated. Verdross' contribution to legal theory has not found as wide an audience as it deserves. This inattention is probably due to the fact that the “theologians” of positivism dismiss Verdross' theory for his disbelief in the “holy trinity” of that school: the personified state, sovereignty, and the will of the state.

Verdross professes to adhere to the empirical method. It will be seen that for him a norm is law only if it manifests itself in political reality. But, being a legal purist, Verdross is not concerned with, nor does he attempt to deal with, this objective actuality, i.e., his is not a sociological study. Verdross has been criticised for not limiting himself to a portrayal of facts and for affirming “a priori international legal norms, viewed as an international constitution.”

In any work of classification, the selection of standards is, of course, of primary importance. In the budget of the League, absurd results appear at various points as a result of arranging the contents thereof now according to one type of standard (subject-matter, as “Mandates”), now according to another (kind of service, as “Liaison”). Without coördinate and mutually exclusive standards, no classification can be complete or satisfactory.

One or two of the points made above might, it is obvious, be used as indices of classification if not used as grounds of exclusion. That is, if unofficial international organizations are not excluded entirely, as they logically should be, from this study, they might form one of the two classes of international organizations, along with official organizations. Similarly, organizations may be classified as bilateral and multilateral, in accord with the foregoing discussion, as resting upon mere practice or formal convention, as intended for the observance of some principle or for the taking of some overt action, and finally as relying upon national agencies for their operation or possessing agencies of their own.

Although many of our states have exhibited unsettled political conditions in recent months, North Dakota has passed through a unique experience in having four different governors occupy the executive office in six and one-half months. Twice during this period, the supreme court of the state has been requested to determine the right of the governor to hold office, and in each instance it has elevated the lieutenant-governor to the office. The first occasion resulted from the conviction of Governor William Langer of a felony after a trial in the federal district court, and the second involved the constitutional qualifications of Governor Thomas H. Moodie, elected last November.

Periodically the cry, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation,” attracts public attention to the fact that Maine, alone among the states, elects representatives to Congress in September instead of November. How this came to be is fairly well known. But why does Maine persist in her aloofness?

Section 3 of the act of February 2, 1872, for the apportionment of representatives to Congress among the several states, provided: “That the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-six, is hereby fixed and established as the day, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, for the election of Representatives and Delegates to the Forty-fifth Congress; and the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every second year thereafter, is hereby fixed and established as the day for the election, in each of said States and Territories, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the fourth day of March next thereafter.”

“Almost no other art requires such high moral qualifications as statistical comparison.” Dr. Arnold Brecht, then Ministerialdirektor in Prussia's state administration, thus prefaced, about three years ago, his Carnegie lecture at the Berlin Hochschule für Politik in which he cautiously analyzed public expenditures in the United States, England, France, and Germany. And he added: “The international comparison of public expenditures should serve only one end—the contest of all countries for the most constructive and lowest expenditures.”

It is a truism that public interest in present-day government centers around the pressing problem of how to achieve an administrative system conducive to the “most constructive and lowest expenditures.”

Many political scientists have condemned direct election of judges. Of late, an increasing number have recommended the plan of having a judge “run against his record” instead of having him run for office on the strength of his record and at the same time campaign against declared opponents. In California, an experiment has recently been undertaken designed to test the validity of such a plan.

By popularly initiated constitutional amendment, originated by the Commonwealth Club of California and supported by the state chamber of commerce, the state has modified its long-used method of selecting judges of the supreme courts and the district courts of appeal. The amendment neither ends all popular election of judges nor vests all authority for selection in the hands of state officers.

On November 29, 1934, the youngest surviving son of George V was married, to the accompaniment of national excitement greater than that caused by any similar event since Queen Victoria's jubilee of 1897. On May 6 of the present year, the nation and the Empire celebrated George V's jubilee, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne, and popular enthusiasm was even greater than in November. The stability and popularity of the British monarchy is impressive in a Europe which less than twenty years ago saw most ruling monarchs dethroned, and has since witnessed the deposition of Alfonso XIII in Spain and (more recently still) the assassination of the most successful Balkan king. Except for Italy, where the development of Fascism has greatly weakened the position of the king, monarchs exist in Europe only in three Balkan countries and in those regions of northwestern Europe where democratic government has been long established—Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. It is a common assumption that the limited monarch has been found not only compatible with but a support to the democratic capitalistic state.

Public opinion in support of the efficacy of collective efforts for the preservation of peace has been considerably weakened by the events of the past three or four years. While it is exceedingly doubtful whether much success will attend whatever other courses of action nations may adopt to secure themselves against the world's turmoil, students of international affairs must accept the fact that we are now in an eddy of the current of progress. But there is slight justification for despair. Indeed, much has come through the wreckage of the sanctions failure almost undamaged. In certain large fields of action, there has been success in the attempts of the League and allied institutions to create a better world of international relations. Among other successes, the mandates system stands unchallenged as a large advance in the supervision of colonial administration.