he can enforce his new rights to a minimum air space, lighting, and sanitation. Instead we have created administrative agencies to compel the compliance with these new standards and have provided various penalties, civil and criminal, to be imposed for noncompliance therewith.

The common law developed the general rule that public-utility service should be without discrimination as between individuals, and that rates should be reasonable. Neither rule was sufficient to protect the individual shipper, who, even if he had a right which he felt had been violated, lacked either the resources or the influence or the time to prosecute to vindication the right which he felt had been wronged. Therefore we have established utility commissions, railroad commissions, and other administrative agencies, the purpose of which is to set standards of reasonableness and standards of fair service and to enforce them upon public carriers and other public-utility companies.

The tendency to develop the administrative arm of government is not confined to any one field of law, nor do I believe there is any general theory which explains it. It represents generally a clumsy striving on the part of the community to secure more efficiency in the operation and effect of its law. Compromises in the interest of economy of time and effort and certainty in business transactions result frequently in overturning general rules and replacing them with more specific statutory regulation, Examples are found in our workmen's compensation law, our Torrens systems of land-title registration, our standard insurance policies, and our legislation for the control of riparian streams and of water rights therein.

The effect of this legislation is to increase tremendously the administrative arm of our Governments, Federal and State. Our appropriations for administrative departments have increased by leaps and bounds, and we are obliged, whether or not we desire it, to turn our attention to the problem of efficiency and economy in our public administration.

I do not want to deal particularly with the subject of efficiency and economy. I had hoped that Dr. Schurman would be here to tell you of his experience as one of the leading members of the recent constitutional convention in New York. Much of the time of that convention was given to the reorganization of the administrative forces of the State, to centralization of executive authority, to an executive budget, and to provision for more effective executive leadership in legislation. The development in size and importance of the administration is driving us toward centralization of power and responsibility in administration, and this in turn seems to require more definite executive leadership in matters of legislation. The New York convention provided that the heads of administrative departments of the State government might be taken from the membership of the legislature, thereby indirectly making it possible for administrative officers to take part in the deliberations of the legislature.

Without going into the question of ways and means of accomplishing efficiency in administration, I want to emphasize the relationship of legislation to any efficiency program. In a republican form of government there is no administration except as it is provided for by legislation. The organization, its procedure, powers, and duties, must be found in general or detail provisions of legislation. Unless legislation be carefully adapted to the problems which will be encountered in its administration, its provisions may and have frequently in this country become a strait-jacket on the administration. It often happens that carelessly formulated legislation contains provisions respecting its administration inconsistent with efficiency and economy and yet binding on officials. Until such legislation is amended or repealed there can be no reorganization of government and there can be no general scheme of efficiency and economy put into force.

In the United States our constitutions contain a great deal of material relating to the administration of powers and duties and interrelationships of public officers. The first thing we need as a basis for improvement in our administration is a revision of our existing constitutional and statutory provisions dealing with the organization, procedure, functions, powers, and duties of our administration.

Even where our constitutions and statutes do not definitely provide for the organization and procedure they do contain provisions which affect the administration. These provisions frequently interfere with the accomplishment of constructive reforms in administration. Irrespective of the extent to which provision for our reorganized administation should be written into our constitutions and our statutes, it is essential that all constitutional and statutory references to administration be consistent with the accomplishment of constructive reforms. Our constitutions and statutes should therefore be subjected to a general survey by persons familiar with the fundamentals of constructive proposals for the improvement in our administration and should be rewritten in the interest of advancing rather than retarding the realization of the purposes of such reorganization. Thereafter the proponents of new legislation should assume the responsibility for carefully adjusting the administrative provisions of their proposed statutes in the interest of their effective administration. This does not mean that the drafters of legislation should define too sharply the particular kind of administrative organization or procedure for the enforcement of the rules prescribed in a statute. Room should be left for administrative discretion and the development of the administration to meet new conditions. It is difficult to draw the line between that which should be incorporated in the statute and that which should be left to the discretion of the administrative officials.

No public officer ever enjoyed more autocratic administrative power than that intrusted to Col. Goethals for the construction of the Panama Canal. He had full power to organize, reorganize, or abolish the various divisions of his administrative force. We can not pass statutes granting rights and imposing duties and hand over to public officials any such autocratic and general authority for their enforcement. There must be some limitation, some description of the power which the administrator may use and of his method of using it. These limitations are provided for by legislation. It is legislation, therefore, which controls the administration. When Col. Goethals found a bureau or department under his jurisdiction operating wastefully or inefficiently he had only to change it to suit his purposes. When we find waste or inefficiency in our public offices we have, in most cases, first to amend the legislation affecting those offices before we can accomplish our proposed reforms.

In the development of the administration we are but following in the footsteps of European nations. We have much to learn from their experience. In the field of comparative law there is no more important and practical opportunity for the application of the results of research than in that of administrative law.

If we Republics on this side of the Atlantic are to enjoy the benefits of efficient law and government we must first bring about efficiency in our judicial and administrative machinery for the enforcement of law. We have a great problem and a great opportunity. Can we prove to the rest of the world that a republic can develop an efficient and economic organization? Unless we do prove that our republics have that capacity-apart from the tremendous pressure which their place in an armed camp puts upon our sister republics in Europe-then we may find ourselves obliged to sacrifice liberty to safety and thereby help the world to take a step backward in government.

The CHAIRMAN. We have heard a very thorough, vivid. and forceful expression of the philosophy of twentieth century law, particularly that part of it which has to do with administrative government. The subject is now open to discussion by any members of the congress who care to be heard.

Mr. PHANOR J. EDER. Mr. Chairman. I should like to ask Dr. Parkinson if he does not think that the tendency of intrusting the development of law to administrative bodies will be to abolish the legislature, and whether it is not high time to come out in the open and admit that that would in itself be a very good thing; that representative government is no longer what we used to think it; and that government for the common good can best be carried on through administrative agencies, with the direct control of the people, omitting the representative government through inefficient legislatures? The CHAIRMAN. If Dr. Parkinson will accept that challenge, he can now respond.

Mr. EDER. But it is not a challenge.

Mr. PARKINSON. I believe that while it is essential that we delegate many of the details of modern legislation to administrative bodies, it is, nevertheless, desirable that representative legislatures control the broad underlying policies of such legislation. And I believe that the tendencies in administration and the development of the law to which I have been referring will go on quietly without destroying the legislature, provided the legislature is so organized and so equipped that it can properly perform its prime function of policy determining, and so that the detail work which it now does which is rather the work of experts, shall be relegated by the policy determining body to experts employed by it. That does not mean turning over to experts the formulation of legislation. On the contrary, it means perfecting the legislature as a policy determining body, the policies being based on exact technical expert opinion furnished to it.

Mr. EDER. Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether it would be trans gressing on Dr. Parkinson's time or energy too much, but I think it might be of great interest to members to hear something about the bureau of which he is the head in New York and of the excellent work that it is doing.

The CHAIRMAN. Perhaps Dr. Parkinson would be willing to give us some information of his work there.

Mr. PARKINSON. Mr. Chairman, we have organized at Columbia University, under an endowment provided for the purpose, a bureau which is devoting itself to research in legislation and public administration. We are carrying on that research both theoretically and practically. We are making studies of constitutional limitations, in the course of which we recently completed and published for the

New York constitutional convention a complete index digest of all provisions of the State constitutions of the country as they existed on January 1, 1915. We are collecting and indexing for comparative purposes the legislation of the States and of foreign countries, and then, in order that our research may not go too far into the air and produce merely publications, we are making the services of our staff available to legislatures, public bodies of various kinds, heads of administrative bureaus, and semipublic agencies working for some kind of political reform through legislation. We are lending technical service in the formulation of their legislation, and in evolving the administrative machinery which will be necessary to carry it out. In this manner we are finding opportunity for the application of the results of our research to practical problems of law reform. I think I am quite safe in saying that under the auspices of Columbia University we are endeavoring to develop a legal research bureau which may, I think, be described as analagous to the medical research bureaus, and, like them, we are giving out the results of our researches to be applied in the practical affairs of life.

The CHAIRMAN. We will now proceed to the final paper to be read this afternoon, by Dr. Fernando Sánchez Fuentes, of the faculty of the Law School of Habana, whom I take great pleasure in introducing.

GOBIERNOS PRESIDENCIALES Y PARLAMENTARIOS EN EL CONTINENTE AMERICANO.

Por FERNANDO SÁNCHEZ DE FUENTES,

Profesor de la Universidad de La Habana, Cuba.

No puede ser más interesante este problema de Derecho Público interno, ni más acertada su inclusión en el cuestionario de los trabajos de esta sección, formado no sólo con vista de las cuestiones que atañen a las relaciones de Estado a Estado-Derecho Internacional Público de Estado a ciudadano o de legislación a legislación-Derecho Internacional Privado-sino para estudiar los aspectos más importantes y transcendentales de la vida pública interna de las Naciones o sea su Derecho Político, promoviendo de este modo una acción colectiva científica de positivos y provechosos resultados.

Es sabido que uno de los caracteres distintivos del régimen representativo es la separación de los Poderes y de la no realización en la práctica de esta separación se deduce uno de los más graves cargos contra el sistema.

Pero hay que tener en cuenta que aún en la necesidad de usar términos del lenguaje corriente, éstos han de tomar cierto sentido técnico al ser empleados, por lo que la separación de dichos Poderes no quiere decir aislamiento del uno respecto del otro; como harmonía no quiere decir confusión sino que, por el contrario, supone y exige la unidad de cada parte y la variedad de ellas para que su conjunto determine esa harmonía, por lo que esa separación no impide la debida y natural coordinación entre órganos de una propia entidad,

que después de todo, van a realizar, cada uno dentro de su función, el fin primordial del Estado, el jurídico.

Ahora bien; no es menos cierto que hay que perfeccionar en la práctica el funcionamiento del sistema y que la forma defectuosa en que se realiza da lugar a todas esas censuras, el eje de las cuales gira en torno de la falta de diafanidad de los procedimientos, de la ocultación a la general opinión de los pueblos de las relaciones entre el Ejecutivo y el Legislativo, etc., dando lugar a los "Poderes tácitos" de que hablaba Hamilton.

Y aunque se ha buscado el nexo entre ambos poderes en el "speaker" y en las Comisiones de los Cuerpos Colegisladores, es evidente que, para que desaparezcan esos defectos y cesen esas censuras hay que hacer algo que supla esas deficiencias y que estando perfectamente regulado por la ley, sustituya el sistema irregular y acomodaticio hoy en práctica, del cual no debe derivarse, como piensan algunos, la condenación del régimen presidencial, sino el estímulo para su perfeccionamiento ya que a otros respectos presenta en su esencia misma, ventajas. Uno de esos medios de relación entre ambos Poderes, puede ser, a no dudarlo, la asistencia de los Secretarios de Despacho a las Cámaras, sin que exista objeción constitucional verdaderamente seria que lo impida ni en los Estados Unidos ni en Cuba.

En los primeros, encontramos al principio de su historia, al propio Presidente acudiendo al Congreso para dar cuenta de sus mensajes como lo hace el actual hombre de Estado que hoy ocupa el Ejecutivo Nacional, hasta que un espíritu de más radical republicanismo hace, con Madison, en 1813, declinar la fórmula. Después, son frecuentes los casos en que un Secretario es llamado si no a informar ante las Cámaras a hacerlo ante sus Comisiones. Podemos recordar como reciente, la información facilitada por el Secretario de Estado, Mr. Knox ante una Comisión Congresional; y en el propio Senado de los Estados Unidos existe, como se confirma en una de las últimas edíciones de la conocida obra "Gobierno Congresional" del Honorable Presidente Wilson, un proyecto de ley en el que se propone tal medida.

Ni el texto Constitucional Norteamericano ni el Cubano, inspirado en aquél, se oponen a tal reforma, limitándose a la prohibición de que los empleados del Estado puedan ser miembros, al mismo tiempo, de una u otra Cámara.

Y he ahí fijada, de paso, la forma en que los Secretarios podrán asistir al Congreso: sólo con voz, no para votar porque entonces vendrían a ser también parte de aquellos Cuerpos, desde el punto en que ejercitasen los derechos de los mismos, entre los que figura como el más importante, el voto.

Nuestro criterio favorable a esa innovación lo hemos demostrado en la práctica, coadyuvando en el proyecto cubano discutido en la Comisión de Justicia y Códigos de nuestra Cámara, y aprobado después por ésta, aunque no llegó a ser ley.

El proyecto establecía que para que comparecieran los Secretarrios era necesario que así lo acordase el Cuerpo respectivo, de modo que se necesitaba de una votación por mayoría ordinaria, de la mitad más uno, para ello, evitándose así que para cualquier futileza fuera llamado el Secretario, el cual tenía también el derecho de concurrir cuando lo creyera conveniente para hacerse oir y para presentar mensajes e informar y discutir.

No creo tampoco, como se ha indicado elocuentemente aquí, que puedan tener el derecho de proponer leyes que el Ejecutivo envíe por su mediación pues en este aspecto la prohibición constitucional sí es terminante.

La Sección 3 del Artículo II de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos, dice, refiriéndose a las facultades del Ejecutivo: "Presentará de tiempo en tiempo al Congreso un informe acerca del estado de la Unión y recomendará a su con