On an early page of his celebrated Constitutional Limitations, Judge Cooley defines “constitution” in the following curt terms: “That body of rules and maxims in accordance with which the powers of sovereignty are habitually exercised.” Returning later to the subject, he quotes with approval a more elaborate conception, couched in these words: “What is a constitution, and what are its objects? It is easier to tell what it is not than what it is. It is not the beginning of a community, nor the origin of private rights; it is not the fountain of law, nor the incipient state of government; it is not the cause, but consequence, of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but is the creature of their power, the instrument of their convenience. Designed for their protection in the enjoyment of the rights and powers which they possessed before the constitution was made, it is but the framework of the political government, and necessarily based upon the preëxisting condition of laws, rights, habits, and modes of thought. There is nothing primitive in it, it is all derived from a known source. It presupposes an organized society, law, order, property, personal freedom, a love of political liberty, and enough of cultivated intelligence to know how to guard it against the encroachments of tyranny. A written constitution is in every instance a limitation upon the powers of government in the hands of agents; for there never was a written republican constitution which delegated to functionaries all the latent powers which lie dormant in every nation, and are boundless in extent, and incapable of definition.”

The high command of the present Administration stipulated that all controversial reform legislation on the President's “must” list should be enacted during the first session of the Seventy-fourth Congress, leaving for its second meeting only the inevitable appropriation bills and whatever measures the exigencies of politics and government might make necessary. In accordance with this strategy, the President compelled Congress to remain in Washington until late August, 1935. When the legislators reassembled last January, there was common agreement that the second session would be brief, the “bonus” paid to the exservice men, routine administrative bills enacted, and that the members would then dash off to the quadrennial political war. After a White House conference, the House majority leader, Mr. Bankhead, announced that “the President wants as short a session as possible consistent with the public interest and any eventualities that may arise, caused by possible decisions of the Supreme Court affecting New Deal legislation.” Within a week the high court had invalidated the New Deal farm program and set in motion forces which could be depended upon to prolong and make turbulent the Congressional session. Throughout its duration, debate raged over implications of the separation of powers doctrine. Prominent Democrats asserted that the courts had exceeded their authority in nullifying certain acts passed by the representatives of the people. The Republican orators, on the other hand, generally welcomed the judicial check on the legislative branch but bewailed the “supine surrender of Congressional prerogatives to Executive dictation.” The inexorable rules of politics in an election year preordained that political considerations be given prominence in every legislative deliberation. Thus, directed by the President, pushed by organized minorities, challenged by the Supreme Court, tormented by fear of electoral repulse, our legislators stumbled unhappily through a hectic session.

Final adjournment of the Seventy-fourth Congress, which like its immediate predecessors turned out a substantial grist of bills affecting cities, brought into focus once again the question of what is happening to our “sovereign states” and their political subdivisions. Federal contacts with cities are not, of course, an entirely new phenomenon in the United States. For a number of years prior to the depression, certain federal agencies had maintained informal contacts with municipal governments by offering them services, information, and advice, and such services are still being utilized. Until July, 1932, however, with the passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, congressional statutes had never touched municipal governmental functions except indirectly through grants-in-aid to the states, the federal government had never entered into important contractual relations with cities, and Congress had never sat in legislative session to deal with the problems of cities as political units.

In his campaign for a unicameral legislature in Nebraska, Senator George W. Norris cited the necessity of conference committees as one of the chief evils in the bicameral system. To Senator Norris, the conference committee is often a “third house” of the legislature, where a small group of men, working in secret and enjoying great parliamentary advantages, so modify bills in dispute between the two chambers that the will of the majority is defeated.

The federal farm loan system is a government established, aided, and supervised organization, designed to render an economic service in the field of agricultural lending. Its main purpose is to create and keep open a continuous channel between the farmer and sources of surplus funds in large centers. It was founded nineteen years ago, and has been developed and amplified in order to pool the credit needs of individual farmers with good credit and good farms, and provide for them more nearly the same terms and rates extended to large industrial borrowers. These general rules may be said to govern the operations of its credit policy: (1) without attempting to make all agricultural loans, Farm Credit Administration endeavors to supplement the activities of other agencies, and to set a standard of costs of credit and the terms upon which such credit is extended to agriculture; (2) interest rates charged to farmers should bear a relation to the cost of money to the Farm Credit Administration in the investment market at the time the loan is made; (3) loans should be made with reference to the needs of agriculture and the biological cycle of production; and (4) loans should be made which are within the capacity of the farmer to pay, so that he may repay them out of farm income, minimize his indebtedness, and keep credit channels open for future needs.

Inquiries are ventures into the unknown. As instrumentalities of government, officially organized investigations are a relatively recent addition to the mechanism of politics. Leaving aside regular agencies of criminal procedure such as the grand jury, one may say that the emergence of investigating committees is closely connected with the growth of representative government. Parliamentary inquiries have come to be regarded as essential implements of legislative control over the executive branch. The present brief survey of German experience undertakes to show the potentialities and limitations of a different type of officially organized investigation: the executive inquiry.

In 1934, the Soviet Union rounded out the first great cycle in its development. The fruition of the Five-Year Plan, the general collectivization of agriculture, the entry of the Soviet Union into the councils of the nations of the world—these and many other successes of the Communist régime were evidences of great achievement. Peace and order and economic progress had been attained at home; the stability of the government had been clearly demonstrated, and friends had been made abroad. The social and economic structure of the country had been completely transformed, and the Socialist community was now a going concern.

Without question, the most important legislation passed in 1935 by the British Parliament was the Government of India Act which received the royal assent on August 2, 1935. This statute has numerous claims to careful study by political scientists. On a purely quantitative scale, the Act has two obvious grounds for distinction. It will serve for some years as the fundamental law for one-fifth of the world's population; and it will operate—if all goes well—over the entire subcontinent of India. In the second place, though one hesitates to offer this as a recommendation, the new statute is by all odds the most enormous constitution in the world. In comparison with its bulk, the most notoriously extensive American constitutions (e.g., those of Oklahoma and California) pale into insignificance. The Government of India Act of 1935 contains 478 sections occupying exactly 300 pages, together with a further 130 pages of schedules. But perhaps it should be explained that the new act really contains two constitutions: one for India (210 pages plus schedules) and one for Burma (90 pages plus schedules).