At the beginning of 1948, Italy's first republican constitution went into effect. After exactly a century, the Statuto of 1848 was finally and formally superseded. History will record that the Statuto proved a powerful instrument in the formation of Italian unity and in the development of Italy's freedoms and parliamentary system until 1922, just as it will also be a witness to its rejection and nullification in the course of the subsequent twenty-five years. The new republican constitution represents the first deliberate effort by the Italian people as a whole to guarantee their freedom and common welfare within a constitutional framework.

The influences of many lands are visible in the document. One can see in the rebirth of regionalism the native historical tradition of municipal freedom; the French fear of Caesarism reflected in election of the president by Parliament rather than by the people; British reliance on a balance of power between executive and legislature translated into the almost unlimited executive power of dissolution of the chambers; the time-honored American principle of bicameralism accepted with the creation of two legislative houses of equal power; and the equally famous American doctrine of judicial review tentatively imitated through the establishment of a Constitutional Court. Of Eastern constitutionalism there are only scant traces, the new social and economic rights reflecting rather the general trends of the times than any overt allegiance to the tenets of the Soviet constitution. Indeed, the acceptance of the new has been tempered by a strong restatement of what is valid in the individualistic and liberal traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Eightieth Congress convened under unusual circumstances. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 having just become law, the House and Senate were subjected to the most complete reorganization of recent times. This was due to two things.

First, both parties in each house had to assign de novo every one of their members to the newly established committees. Normally, all members reëlected to Congress are returned to their same committee assignments. Thus the committees on committees are not concerned with giving them committee appointments; some transfers from one committee to a more important one are granted upon request to reëlected members, and promotions are allowed by moving up reëlected members to fill any vacancies on their committees created by defeats or resignations from Congress. This time, the number of committee assignments was curtailed under the law along with a sharp reduction in the number of standing committees. In the House, standing committees were reduced from 48 to 19; in the Senate, from 33 to 15. The shake-up called for a reëxamination of all candidates for every committee berth.

Secondly, party control of the two houses had shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, and in the face of a Democratic Administration. President Truman acknowledged this latter situation in his State of the Union message when he said: “… The Congress and the President, during the next two years, must work together. It is not unusual in our history that the majority of the Congress represents a party in opposition to the President's party. I am the twentieth President of the United States who, at some time during his term of office, has found his own party to be in the minority in one or both Houses of the Congress. … On some domestic issues,” he continued, “we may, and probably shall, disagree. That in itself is not to be feared.”

The total number of cases arising under state constitutions this year is substantially larger than last year. The bulk of the increase seems to fall in the area of civil rights, particularly procedural rights, although there is some increased activity in areas of state and local government as well. The cases fall readily into the general pattern followed in last year's survey.

I. GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION

1. State Government. The standing and circumstances necessary to enable a party to secure a decision on the constitutionality of a statute were discussed by the highest courts of four states. In 1947, the Tennessee legislature passed an Anti-Closed Shop Act which was promptly attacked by a union recognized by the NLRB as exclusive bargaining agent in the defendant plant. A county chancery court upheld the statute against arguments that it violated the state and federal constitution. Before the day fixed for hearing on appeal, the union requested that the appeal be dismissed, a request resisted by the employer and the attorney-general. It is clear from the argument on the request that both parties were seeking an adjudication on the federal question from the federal Supreme Court. Evidently, however, the union decided to press the matter to the latter court in a different and more favorable controversy. In this case, since the lower court upheld the constitutionality of the law, the public interest, it was said, would not be impaired by dismissal. From the precedents cited, however, it seems likely that if the lower court decision had been against the law's constitutionality, the Supreme Court would have refused the request. The same court also held that where the defendant has attacked the constitutionality of a statute unsuccessfully in a criminal trial, he many not raise the same questions in a civil case brought against him, even when the prior adjudication was made in an unpublished opinion.

The problem of adjusting the units and areas of local government to meet changing conditions seems to be a universal one. It involves not only the question of procedure, but also the quest of the ideal. With the exception of school districts, extensive experimentation has not been forthcoming in the United States; other English-speaking countries have been far more concerned with local units and areas.

The present paper deals with the experiences of four central governments—England and Wales, New Zealand, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. None of them has found the ideal system. All have evolved various successful techniques to adjust local units and areas from time to time.

I

Widespread interest in reorganizing the areas and units of local government in England and Wales has been evident since before 1944. During the period 1943 to 1945, numerous individuals and groups came forward with plans for reform, among them the Labor party, the Liberal party, the Liberal National Committee, the National Association of Local Government Officers, the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association, and the Urban and Rural Districts Associations. Proposals by the two Liberal groups, the counties, and the urban and rural districts involved only minor variations from the existing local government structure. As a result, most interest was focused upon the NALGO and AMC reports calling for varying plans of single all-purpose authorities and on Labor's proposal for a two-tier structure.