Our Vanishing Government of Laws

Abstract

LAWYERS hardly need to be told that some long-honored American traditions are rapidly passing into eclipse. of them is the belief in government of laws, not of That belief was cherished by our people through four generations, although sometimes with only a vague notion of what it meant. But in a general way it was taken to mean that the American system of government, being a government of laws, was in some mysterious fashion safeguarded against the uncertainties which are associated with a government of men. A Gallup poll would probably disclose that ninety per cent of our people still think that way. They continue to believe that the laws which govern them are being made by their elected representatives and that the function of the administration is merely to administer these laws. But no careful observer of governmental trends has any such idea. Surveying the political scene of today he feels as though he were sitting on the rear platform of a train gazing at a rapidly receding landscape. One of the ablest administrators that it was my good fortune to know, says a recent writer, I believe, never read, at least more than casually, the statutes that he translated into reality. He assumed that they gave him power to deal with the broad problems of industry and, upon that understanding, he sought his own solutions.' These are the words of one whose distinction in both legal and administrative circles gives him the right to speak with some authority. But when administrators disdain even to read the statutes from which