statutes by administrative orders on a plan similar to the French and English systems.

Administrative Centralization.-The executive departments of the Federal government have been organized on a plan of specific and complete consolidation and concentration of authority. A similar principle is being applied in the states in the establishment of boards, bureaus, and commissions with extensive supervision over local government units. This concentration of authority has been extended primarily to the control of education, health, roads, and tax administration, but it underlies the general movement for the establishment of a multitude of administrative agencies. The general function of these agencies is to cooperate with local units and to aid in the development of better standards of administration. In a few instances, such as health and tax administration, authority is being granted to control local administration either by the appointment of local officials through central officers or by the authority to send central agents to the locality to perform the functions which are either neglected or inadequately performed. In cities the centralization movement has spread rapidly in the adoption of commission government or commissionmanager charters with administrative authority concentrated in a small board or in a single official. Concentration has entered the field of county government, in a few instances where the former disintegrated system is superseded by the control of a small commission or of a county manager. Everywhere the watchword is greater concentration of authority, and correlated therewith is the idea of establishing a more direct responsibility to the electorate through the initiative, referendum, and recall. Administrative concentration leads to important modifications of the traditional theory of separation of powers and the legislative control over the details of administration-two of the primary principles in the formation of the American system of government. Just as the theory of the separation of powers has been abandoned to secure more effective

administration in county, city, and state governments, so the practice of the determination of administrative organization in detail by legislatures is being limited or abandoned entirely. Administrative Orders to Supplement Statutes.-Though executive officers in the United States are limited in their actions to powers and duties defined in the laws, it is quite impossible for the legislature to regulate all of the details of administration. This fact is recognized in the creation of commissions with certain prescribed rule-making powers and in the granting of a limited ordinance power to the President and state executive officers in charge of such matters as immigration, customs, and taxation.

Few people are aware of the great extent to which public administration in the United States national government is controlled by means of administrative regulations or orders, in the nature of subordinate legislation. . . . It is, of course, true that administrative regulations in the United States are, on the whole, of comparatively less importance than Orders in Council and departmental regulations in Great Britain; and relatively still less important than have been the administrative ordinances of the German Bundesrath or the decrees issued in the name of the President of the Republic of France, and similar regulations in other European countries. But the volume and importance of such administrative regulations in the national administration of the United States are, nevertheless, deserving of much more attention than they have hitherto received. .

There are, indeed, besides presidential proclamations and executive orders, many elaborate systems of executive regulations governing the transaction of business in each of the executive departments and in the various services both within and without these departments. These include organized codes of regulations for the army, the navy, the postal service, the consular service, the customs service, the internal revenue service, the coast guard, the patent office, the pension office, the land office, the Indian service, the steamboat inspection service, the immigration and the naturalization bureaus, and the civil-service rules. In addition to long-established types of regulations, there have been many new series of regulations issued in recent years both before the war and more recently by the new war agencies, such as the Food and Fuel Administrations, the War Industries Board, and the War Trade Board.1

John A. Fairlie, "Administrative Legislation," Michigan Law Review (January, 1920), vol. xviii, pp. 181-182.

Among the most important departments issuing rules and regulations having the force of law are the Army and Navy departments, the Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department, and the Post Office, Commerce and Labor Departments. In addition, ordinance-making powers are exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Farm Loan Board. That these regulations have in many instances the full force and effect of laws is the conclusion of the Supreme Court in numerous cases involving such regulations.2

A similar tendency is apparent in the powers granted to commissions in state governments. For example, civil service commissions, public utility commissions, state boards of health, education, etc., have been authorized to issue rules having the full force and effect of laws. When, as in Illinois and New Jersey, this authority is extended to the determination of the salaries and duties of subordinate officers, a practice is inaugurated which greatly restricts legislative power over administrative details. How far this practice will be extended and what effect it will have on administrative organization and personnel, it is difficult to surmise. What form administrative organization will take to secure efficiency and economy in government remains in large part to be determined.

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

F. J. GOODNOW, Comparative Administrative Law (Student's Edition), (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1903).

A thorough and comprehensive treatise on the principles and problems of administration.

J. M. MATHEWS, Principles of State Administration (D. Appleton & Co., 1917).

The standard work on the principles and problems of state administration.

1 John A. Fairlie, "Administrative Legislation," Michigan Law Review (January, 1920), vol. xviii, pp. 186–187. 2 Ibid., pp. 188 ff.

W. B. MUNRO, Principles and Methods of Municipal Administration (The Macmillan Company, 1916) and

HERMAN G. JAMES, Municipal Functions (D. Appleton & Co., 1917), National Municipal League Series, deal authoritatively with important phases of municipal administration.

G. A. WEBER, Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Methods of Administration (D. Appleton & Co., 1919).

Useful summary of official agencies to improve administration. C. G. HAINES, "The Movement for the Reorganization of State Administration," University of Texas Bulletin No. 1848, June, 1920. W. F. WILLOUGHBY, The Government of Modern States (The Century Company, 1919), Chap. XIV, The Executive Branch, and Chap. XVI, the Administrative Branch.

The Executive Department, Illinois Constitutional Convention Bulletin,

No. 9.

Report of Efficiency and Economy Committee, Illinois, 1917.

A comprehensive report on the former administrative organization of the state of Illinois, with an analysis of defects and proposals for reorganization.

Report of Reconstruction Commission, to Gov. Alfred E. Smith, on retrenchment and reorganization in the state government, New York, October, 1919.

State Administration, Bulletin of Bureau of Municipal Research, No. 63, New York, July, 1915.

Contains a discussion by specialists in administration of the proposed amendments for the reorganization of the Executive Branch before the New York Constitutional Convention, 1915.

CHAPTER VI

PROBLEMS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF COURTS AND IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

"I do know that the United States, in its judicial procedure, is many decades behind every civilized government in the world; and I say that it is an immediate and an imperative call upon us to rectify that, because the speediness of justice, the inexpensiveness of justice, the ready access to justice, is the greatest part of justice itself.”

-WOODROW WILSON.

"Justice in the minor courts-the only courts that millions of our people know-administered without favoritism by men conspicuous for wisdom and probity, is the best assurance of respect for our institutions."-CHARLES E. Hughes.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF JUDICIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

ACCORDING to President Taft, "the greatest question before the American people is the improvement of the administration of justice, civil and criminal, both in the matter of its prompt dispatch and the cheapening of its use." The problem of securing an efficient judicial system has been especially difficult in America, where the theory has prevailed that all departments of government must be based on popular approval and sanction. In many respects the judiciary is the most important branch of the American government. Because of the extraordinary authority accorded to the courts to review and to pass upon the validity of legislation, and because of the general phrases in constitutions by which legislative acts are measured on the basis of reasonableness and justice, the judiciary of the American government exercises a greater supervision and control over other departments than does the judiciary in any other government. Moreover, the failure to provide