The power of the Senate to advise and consent to presidential nominations of judicial officers has recently been subjected to sharp criticism. In the main, the Senate is charged with misfeasance rather than nonfeasance in the discharge of this function. In other words, proposals to deprive the Senate of this power are not, like proposals to abolish the electoral college, based on alleged failure of the agency to function independently, but rather on its alleged abuse of the discretion conferred upon it. The Senate, say the critics in effect, has judged not wisely, but too well. Accordingly, it is their general disposition to deprecate interference with the executive rather than to devise more effective cheeky upon him.

Newfoundland, which proudly boasts that she is “Britain's oldest colony,” which has enjoyed responsible government since 1855, and which has been ranked by the Statute of Westminister as one of the Dominions of the British Commonwealth of Nations, voluntarily reverted to the status of a crown colony governed by a commission responsible to Whitehall. The event is without precedent in the history of the Empire. While certain West Indian colonies which have enjoyed representative assemblies have voluntarily given up their elected legislatures, no colony which had attained responsible government has ever before renounced it. The incident is sufficiently unique to be of interest alike to students of the history of the British Empire and of political science in general.

Largely in response to the urgings of the newly elected Democratic governor of Iowa, Clyde L. Herring, the forty-fifth general assembly early in its session passed the necessary legislation to make possible a survey of state and local government in Iowa by the Brookings Institute for Government Research. The survey was begun early in February, 1933; and by the end of July, it was possible to file the report with the interim committee of the legislature which had the matter in hand. This report was published by the state in January, 1934, as a paper-covered volume of 650 closely printed pages.

As a feature of a reformed May Day celebration, the cabinet of Chancellor Englebert Dollfuss, on May 1 last, decreed a new constitution for Austria. The rather lengthy document, consisting of 182 articles and covering some 32 pages in the official Bundesgesetzblatt, is mainly the work of Dr. Otto Ender, former chancellor, who, on July 18, 1933, joined the Dollfuss cabinet as minister for constitutional and administrative reform. It had been approved on April 30 at the final session of the lower house of the republican parliament, the Nationalrat. Owing to the cabinet's cancellation of the mandates of 72 Social Democratic deputies and of two other deputies who had manifested National Socialist sympathies, only 91 of those who had been elected to the Nationalrat in 1930 were eligible to attend the session.

When Canada set up a federal system of government in 1867, she had nearly eighty years of American experience to build upon. Consequently, she was able to evade many of the problems in which we find ourselves entangled today. When Austria provided for judicial review in her constitution of 1920, she could profit from more than a century and a quarter of American experience, as well as from the various modifications of the American plan to be found in the British Dominions and elsewhere. Hence, we should not be surprised to learn that in the opinion of Dr. Hans Kelsen the theory and practice of judicial control of legislation reached a more complete development in Austria than in any other nation.

Following a day of parliamentary skirmishing during which the behavior of the majority sometimes recalled the parliamentary tactics of the illustrious American Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Thomas B. Reed, the Polish Sejm, on January 26, adopted an entirely new constitution for Poland. The bill providing for this action had been introduced in the Sejm by Marshal Pilsudski's parliamentary allies, the government bloc, toward the end of 1933, but they had consistently failed to secure a majority of two-thirds demanded for amendments by the existing constitution. On the 26th, however, opposition deputies, in protest against the threats of the government bloc to alter the usual procedure as well as against the bloc's attempt to dragoon them into acceptance of the bill, withdrew in a body.

The present confusion in British parliamentary life results from three irreconcilable elements. In the first place, the House of Commons resembles the typical Continental legislative chamber in its division into groups, with an only provisional coalition of some of them into what might be called indifferently a union sacree, or a “government of concentration.” In the second place, the active political life of the electorate, being based on the traditional political parties, seems to have very little relation to parliamentary groupings. In the third place, the government shows a tendency to borrow its policies from the program of the opposition. Examination in turn of each of the three elements may reveal whatever coherence exists.

When the Constitution of the United States was before the states for adoption, James Iredell of North Carolina made the following observation: “The misfortune attending most constitutions which have been deliberately formed has been that those who formed them thought their wisdom equal to all possible contingencies, and that there could be no error in what they did. The gentlemen who framed this Constitution thought with much more diffidence of their capacities; and, undoubtedly, without a provision for amendment it would have been more justly liable to objection, and the character of its framers would have appeared much less meritorious. This, indeed, is one of the greatest beauties of the system, and should strongly recommend it to every candid mind.”

It has long been recognized by students of labor economics that a high standard of living has definite international implications. Since early in the nineteenth century, the advocates of labor reform have attempted to stimulate international action which might bring about a simultaneous elevation of the condition of the workers in order to avoid the use of labor as a factor in competition. For nearly a century now, the international treaty has been pressed as the most suitable means of avoiding competitive disadvantage as a result of social changes, and the International Labor Organization, founded by Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, is the fruit of this agitation. It is natural, therefore, that any country seeking to maintain high labor standards should welcome ultimately the possibility of international action in defense of its effort.

International organization is generally regarded as an aggregate of machinery and processes whereby states cooperate with each other for the attainment of common objectives. Granting the validity of this conception, it may be shown that the fields in which states coöperate are of vital importance to individual persons. The international treatment of economic questions looks toward the improvement of the economic status of the individual. The cooperative efforts of states in regard to so-called political questions, such as disarmament, arbitration, and alliances, either promote amicable relations conducive to profitable transactions between the nationals of different countries or lead to hostile activities that injure economic activity and place the individual under the necessity of bearing arms.

In no part of the world is there greater devotion to the principle of representative government than in the Scandinavian countries. Nowhere, too, are there more homogeneous, intelligent, and literate electorates. And in none of the three are party lines more sharply drawn or issues more clearly defined and presented than in Norway, where, as in all Scandinavia, there is complete freedom of discussion. Probably there is no better example in recent years of a bitterly fought election over clear-cut issues, yet conducted in a most orderly fashion, than the triennial election of October 16,1933, in which were chosen 150 members of the Norwegian Storthing.

When the United States government, on January 7, 1932, and the Extraordinary Assembly of the League of Nations, on March 11, 1932, and again on February 24, 1933, invoked non-recognition as a sanction,1 the necessity at once arose of determining what would be the precise effects, as far as international relations are concerned, of withholding recognition of Manchukuo. It may seem strange that the decision to resort to non-recognition as a sanction was taken before an attempt was made to determine the practical effects of such action on the Far Eastern situation. Presumably, however, this must be the procedure in the application of international sanctions.