The Ferguson case in 1917 represents the only instance of the impeachment and conviction of a state official in Texas. The law of impeachment must then be sought in the proceedings of the Ferguson trial, the opinions of the attorney-general, and the opinion of the supreme court in 1924 in the case of Ferguson v. Maddox, which reviewed the legality of the 1917 proceedings in determining whether Mr. Ferguson was eligible to have his name placed on the primary election ballot as a candidate for governor.

Impeachment at a Special Session. The constitution provides that the governor may on extraordinary occasions convene the legislature in special sessions limited to thirty days' duration, during which there shall be no legislation upon subjects other than those designated in the proclamation of the governor calling the session or presented by him. The facts in the Ferguson case may be reviewed briefly. The speaker of the House of Representatives, on his own motion, had issued a call for the House to meet in special session on August 1, 1917, to consider the impeachment of the governor. Before the members could assemble, the governor issued a call for a special session of the legislature to meet at the same time as that set by the speaker's call for the purpose of considering the matter of university appropriations. The House proceeded with the investigation and impeached the governor, who was thereupon suspended from office.

It is interesting that this work by Professor Keith, who is acknowledged everywhere to be the most authoritative of the commentators on the constitutional system of the British Empire, should have appeared at the very moment when the Conference on Dominion Legislation and Merchant Shipping Laws began its sittings in London in October, 1929. If it was intended to guide their deliberations, the publication of the Report of the Conference in February, 1930, shows how widely a conservative statement of the existing law and practice will differ from the new structure of Dominion autonomy, once the Report is accepted by the Imperial Conference, by the Parliament in Great Britain, and by the legislatures of the Dominions. For where Professor Keith saw in the “equal status” of the now classic Balfour Report of 1926 only “exaggerated language,” “careless phraseology,” and “rhetoric,” the Conference took this “root-principle” seriously and applied it throughout. As the Conference contained all the most important legal advisers and civil servants of the governments concerned, besides four Dominion ministers, its report will almost certainly be accepted by the Imperial Conference.

The experts recognized only one general principle from Professor Keith's work: that any changes which are to be made in the legal status quo in relation to certain subjects would have to be accomplished by acts of the British Parliament. These subjects are: (1) disallowance and reservation, (2) the extraterritorial operation of Dominion legislation, (3) the over-riding powers of British legislation laid down by the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865, (4) the right of Great Britain alone to legislate on royal titles and the succession to the throne, and (5) the making of basic changes in Merchant Shipping and Colonial Courts of Admiralty Acts.

Casting the largest popular vote yet recorded in any election in Germany, the German people elected on Sunday, September 14, 1930, the fifth Reichstag under the Weimar constitution. Using Article 48, the Brüning government had put into effect certain emergency measures which it considered necessary to alleviate the existing economic situation. But when called upon to pass upon these decrees, the Reichstag rejected them; whereupon the President, on the advice of the cabinet, dissolved the Reichstag and ordered new elections.

The campaign occurred in a time of serious economic depression. Nearly three million unemployed persons were in receipt of government relief, either national or local. Taxes had been increased, salaries decreased, and there was widespread dissatisfaction. The government headed by Chancellor Brüning, from its inception a minority cabinet, appealed to the country to return to power with increased strength the parties which had given it support. On the other hand, the government was severely attacked by the Social Democrats for its use of Article 48; by the Nationalists because of its support of the Young Plan; by the Communists on general principles; and last, but not least, by the National Socialists led by Adolf Hitler, not on general principles, but without any principles at all! In many respects this election resembled the May election of 1924 more closely than the election of 1928.

Not only was the election of critical importance to Germany and the world from an economic point of view, but it was also of great moment in the evolution of German political parties and democratic institutions in general.

State courts determine, in the absence of constitutional provision to the contrary, whether amendments to state constitutions have been proposed and adopted in the manner provided for these constitutions. Not every minor deviation from the course of action marked out in the constitution for its amendment is deemed sufficient to justify the court in declaring that the amendment has been “unconstitutionally adopted,” but whether these deviations are serious enough to warrant such a declaration is a question to be determined by the courts themselves. Statutes supplementing constitutional provisions on the subject of amendment are valid if not in conflict with the constitutional provisions themselves, and substantial compliance with these rules is also required by the courts. Sometimes the provisions regulating the subject of publication of proposed amendments are constitutional; at other times they are statutory. In either case, publication in the manner provided for, and for the period of time provided for, is necessary to the validity of the amendment. Publication for two weeks, when the period should have been four weeks, was deemed sufficient by the Nebraska court to invalidate the amendment involved.

American public administration continues to be the subject of an unparalleled degree of attention. In an address before the Governmental Research Conference in November, 1929, surveying administrative progress, Dr. Luther Gulick declared: “As a nation, we have adopted in conspicuous degree the habit of research. This is a milestone in our progress.” Our intense preoccupation with our administrative institutions is undoubtedly in part a reflection of their imperfection, but in part also a typical American conviction that there are no discoverable limits, as yet, to the opportunity for perfection.

On a national scale, the present tendency is signalized by the appointment by President Hoover of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, on the basis of whose first reports the President recommended, among other things, the transfer of the prohibition unit from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice, modification of federal court structure to relieve congestion, and consolidation of frontier services. The President has also called a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, which is to meet in 1930, and for which much preparatory investigation was carried on in 1929. More recently, the President appointed a Commission on Social Trends, and directed it to present an analysis of social movements broadly parallel to the study of recent economic trends. Several units of this study will be devoted to aspects of public administration.

An enlarged program of research in public administration was inaugurated at the University of California under the direction of Professor Samuel C. May, with the assistance of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The decisive victory, on July 28, of the Conservative party in the seventeenth general election since Confederation came as a surprise to the Canadian people. The party, which did not elect a single member in six of the nine provinces in 1921, carried six provinces decisively and in two others, Saskatchewan and Quebec, scored its greatest successes since 1911. In 1926, Mr. Bennett, the new prime minister, was the only Conservative member between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains. This time he has 23 Conservatives among the 54 Prairie members. He, indeed, has more Conservative supporters in the House of Commons than any prime minister since Sir John A. MacDonald. With a majority of 28, exclusive of the speaker, over all opposition parties, he is the first prime minister in a decade to be undoubted master of the political scene (see note 1 on following page).

When Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced, on May 6, the speedy dissolution of Parliament, he may have thought that it was wise to go to the country before the trade depression had been too prolonged, or, as seems more probable, he may have underestimated the seriousness of the situation. One of his strongest supporters, the Manitoba Free Press, made the following significant comment the day after the election: “The manner in which Mr. Bennett played upon Mr. King's pride, combativeness, and perhaps belief in his star in order to get him in the mood to fight a battle on ground chosen by his opponents and under conditions which helped them and put him at a disadvantage will doubtless be recorded in future books of political strategy for future prime ministers.”

Twenty years of discussion of budget procedure came to a conclusion with the decision of the Court of Appeals on November 19, 1929, in People of the State of New York v. Tremaine. This decision upheld the contention of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as to the powers of the executive in budget procedure, as provided for by Article 3a of the state constitution.

The first chapter in the movement to improve financial procedure in the state was the passage in 1910 of a law which initiated a system requiring all requests for appropriations to be filed and tabulated for the use of the legislature and the governor in advance of the legislative session. Prior to this time, no attempt had been made to collect or compile the requests before the opening of the legislative session. This law of 1910 provided that on or before November 15 of each year each spending agency should file with the comptroller a detailed statement of all requests for appropriations to be made at the next session of the legislature. The requests were to be tabulated by the comptroller and then transmitted to the governor by December 15, and to the legislature on the opening day of the session.

The next change in budget procedure occurred in 1913, when Governor Sulzer appointed a committee of inquiry to investigate the management of state departments and institutions with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency in public service.