Congress In Washington Research Articles

The Other Supreme Court

The Other Supreme Court ROSS E. DAVIES* “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court.” —U.S. Const, art. Ill, § 1 (emphasis added) Despite the Constitution’s “one supreme Court” language, the Supreme Court came in two flavors for thirty-seven years. From 1802 to 1838, the members ofthe Court gathered in Washington every winter for a conventional en banc February Term,1 but then in the summer a single Justice would return to the nation’s capital to sit alone as a rump Supreme Court for a short August Term. This odd one-Justice rump Court does not fit the longstanding and widely accepted understanding that the words “one supreme Court” mean “one [indivisible] supreme Court”—a single en banc body consisting of all of its available and qualified members to conduct its business. The Framers ofthe Con­ stitution thought that was what they said when they chose those words, as the records of the constitutional convention of 1787 show.2 Gouverneur Morris, an influential figure in the drafting ofthe Constitution, recalled this point on the floor ofthe Senate in 1802: “The consti­ tution says, the judicial power shall be vested in one supreme court, and in inferior courts. The legislature can therefore only organize one supreme court, but they may establish as many inferior courts as they shall think proper.”3 A couple ofgenerations later, ChiefJustice Mor­ rison R. Waite was even more emphatic about the indivisibility ofthe “one” Supreme Court. Addressing a banquet in Philadelphia during a celebration of the centennial of the Consti­ tution, while Congress in Washington debated proposals to enlarge and panelize the Court,4 he said, I beg you to note this language: “One Supreme Court and such in­ ferior courts as Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish.” Not a Supreme Court or Supreme Courts, but “one,” and only one. This one Supreme Court Congress can­ not abolish, neither can it create an­ other. Upon this the Constitution has no doubtful meaning. There must be one, and but one. Certainly such a provision, in such pointed language, 222 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Pennsylvania delegate Gouverneur Morris had a great deal of influence on the ultimate formulation of the language of the Constitution. He disagreed with pro­ posed language prohibiting increases in the salaries of Supreme Court Justices on the ground that the other solution to an increasing workload—adding more members—would not reduce the burdens of in­ dividual Justices since cases could not be divided among them. carries with it the strongest implica­ tion that when this court acts, it must act as an entirety, and that its judg­ ments shall be the judgments of the court sitting judicially as one court and not as several courts.5 In the same vein, Waite’s colleague Jus­ tice Stephen J. Field reported that theory and practice were in accord on the Court: “No case in the Supreme Court is ever referred to any one Justice, or to several ofthe Justices, to de­ cide and report to the others.”6 And ChiefJus­ tice Charles Evans Hughes wrote to Congress in 1937, at the height of the controversy over President Franklin Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan: “I may also call attention to the provisions ofarticle III, section 1, ofthe Constitution that thejudicial power ofthe United States shall be vested ‘in one Supreme Court’ .... The Con­ stitution does not appear to authorize two or more Supreme Courts or two or more parts of a supreme court functioning in effect as sepa­ rate courts.”7 Finally, retired ChiefJustice Earl Warren attacked a proposal for the creation of a National Court of Appeals in part on indi­ visibility grounds, rhetorically asking, “When the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is exer­ cised by two courts, have we not created two Supreme Courts in contravention of this con­ stitutional limitation?”8 Nothing has changed, then, since the Constitution was written and ratified. It is and always has been understood that Congress’s implementation of the “one supreme Court” language ofArticle III has not involved and could not involve a reorganiza­ tion of the Court under which some Justice or Justices...

Easy Come, Easy Go: Ministerial Turnover in Russia, 1990 – 2004

A CABINET JOB REPRESENTS the zenith of a political career, whether in Russia or elsewhere. Yet the turnover of cabinet members is affected, albeit in varying degrees, by the duration of the government, that is, the length of its stay in office. The goal of this study is to analyse ministerial turnover in Russia. The chronological scope of the study is about 14 years, from July 1990, when the first transitional prime minister, Ivan Silaev, was appointed, to February 2004, when the cabinet of Mikhail Kas'yanov was dissolved. The study seeks to address several questions. First, I will discuss the duration of Russian governments in a comparative perspective. Second, I will analyse the turnover of ministers in Russia. Specifically, I will examine rotation across governments and types of ministerial specialisation. I will also consider the cases of short-term and long-lasting ministers. Finally, I will inquire into the turnover of deputy prime ministers and first deputy prime ministers, who constitute a 'buffer group' between prime minister and ordinary ministers in the Russian

The Mosaic Ceiling of 1933 at the Royal Ontario Museum and Its Craftsmen: The Untold Story

Several factors of a cultural and social nature may help explain the use of mosaics in public buildings in North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The influence of the popular Beaux-Arts movement in architecture and the general revival of classical styles produced an appreciation for decoration and fine detail of the kind provided by mosaics. This collaborative art requires the technical skills of trained craftsmen able to adapt and execute the specifications of architects and the designs of artists, and thus mosaics are feasible only when such artisans are available. This was the case during the period in question. Workers from the Friuli region of northeastern Italy skilled in the techniques of mosaic and terrazzo had migrated all over Europe in the nineteenth century, producing masterpieces like the mosaics in the Opera in Paris. Later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they emigrated to North America, first to the United States and then to Canada.1 Although the literature on mosaics in North America discusses the architects and artists responsible for the works, for example those of 1897 adorning the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., very little is known about the craftsmen.2 The Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje is not alone in commenting ironically that workers responsible for the landmarks of Canadian cities are generally forgotten.3 For one monument, however, namely a major cultural institution in Canada dating from the 1930s, the role of the mosaic craftsmen can be determined. Photographs preserved by their families, documents found in the archives, articles published in old newspapers, together with the oral testimonies of relatives and acquaintances, make it possible to reconstruct the untold story of the craftsmen's contribution.

International Center for Medical Technologies acknowledges Artificial Organ Pioneers at the ASAIO-ISAO Joint Congress in 2003.

The International Center for Medical Technologies (ICMT), a museum for artificial organs in Houston, Texas, officially opened in November 2002, as previously published in Artificial Organs 2003;27(9):821-32. The museum expanded its original activities to formulate the International Academy for Artificial Organ Pioneers (Academy) and the International Faculty for Health and Medical Technologies (Faculty). At the joint American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO) and International Society for Artificial Organs (ISAO) Congress in Washington, DC on June 18, 2003, Yukihiko Nosé introduced the ICMT and its formulation. The activities and future perspectives were presented by the ICMT Museum Director, Steven Phillips; the Academy Dean, Lowell Harmison; and the Faculty Dean, Michael E. DeBakey.

IHPBA Newsletter

IHPBA Newsletter

A mini-review of "A chronology of noteworthy events in American psychology" by Warren R. Street.

Reference for Book Reviewed: Street, W.R. (1994). A chronology of noteworthy events in American psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychology Association. [Library of Congress card catalog number: BF108U5S77 1994. Copies: APA Order Department, PO Box 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784. 425 pages. Hardbound.] Warren Street has compiled a thorough chronology of the history of American psychology in particular, and of psychology in general, covering key events from 427 BCE to the present. Street's book comprises an important resource that no psychologist should be without. Warren R. Street compiled a chronology of American psychology that covers the years from 427 BCE to 1993 CE. Between those dates inclusive are brief descriptions and exact dates of 2,827 noteworthy events in the history of psychology, with particular attention given to American psychology and the American Psychological Association (APA). (Street, 1994, p. vii) To say that Street's chronology is thorough would perhaps be an understatement. Street conducted the better part of his research effort at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where he was able to access, find and peruse many original primary source documents. Street made every effort to include key dates and the events that happened on them. His sources included biographies, autobiographies, public archives, history texts, journal articles, biographical dictionaries, association archives, contemporary newspaper reports and correspondence with scholars. The key events listed include the dates of birth of psychologists (and of pertinent, earlier philosophers), the dates of publication of significant books, journal articles, and psychological tests, the passage of relevant Statutes by Congress and by the various State legislatures that have impacted psychology, relevant court decisions, key events in the histories of various psychology associations, including the APA, and many other events, and even dates when psychologists appeared on postage stamps (usually, the stamps of countries other than the United States). Street numbered each event, and, of course, placed them in chronological order. A few typical entries from early in the chronology read: Sept. 28, 1838. Darwin read Malthus' essay on population. May 10, 1848. American Association for the Advancement of Science founded Oct. 16, 1844. American Psychiatric Association founded. What unfolds from Street's chronology is a resource not unlike that of a good dictionary, thesaurus or other desk reference. If you wanted to know when a key piece of legislation was passed that impacted psychology, Street's book would be the first place to look. Likewise, if you wanted to know when a psychologist was born (or died), Street's book would likely have it listed. The dates that various States required licenses for practicing psychology are listed. As are the dates that various Divisions of APA came into being. The book also includes the dates that various associations merged with the APA. Beyond being an archive for dates and events, Street's book can also be used to gain a larger picture of the development of psychology. For instance, we may think of licensure as a national situation, without realizing that it occurred State by State, and not all at the same time. That is, while one State may have required a license to practice psychology, an adjacent State might not have had such a requirement. I found that this added perspective to the issue of licensing, especially insofar as it removed any preconception of it being something that always existed or which came into being nationally all at once. From Street's book I extracted the dates each state enacted certification or licensure for the practice of psychology. These are listed in Table I. As you can see, licensure did not happen all at once. The effort to bring either certification or licensure to all 50 states took over 30 years to accomplish. …

Hannah Arendt – Paul Tillich. Briefwechsel

This edition presents the hitherto largely unpublished correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Paul Tillich, and is supplemented by further important documents, taken from the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, the Library of Congress in Washington and the New York Public Library. This is the first time these documents have been published in full.

AMSPDC: An overview of its history and evolving mission

AMSPDC: An overview of its history and evolving mission

Commission 41: History Of Astronomy (A Joint Iau-Iuhps Commission): (Histoire De L’Astronomie)

The membership of the Commission, as of its 50th anniversary in 1998, stands at 146 members and 19 consultants. In order to increase communications, during the report period the President issued six Newsletters to Commission members, consultants, and IAU officers. In a further attempt to increase communications, Commission 41 also instituted a web site (http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/iaucomm41/) in early 1998. This was largely due to the efforts of C41 Organizing Committee member Wolfgang Dick and the kindness of Professor Peter Brosche in supplying space. The site not only contains the Newsletters, meeting notices, and a list of members, but also the Bibliography on History of Astronomy, compiled by Ruth Preitag of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The site also links to the history of astronomy site maintained for several years by the History of Astronomy Working Group of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, and now also maintained on behalf of Commission 41. These sites serve not only for better communication among Commission members, but also the broader history of astronomy community.

Constructive Engagement II, or Catching the Fourth Wave: Who and Where are the “Constituents” for Africa?

tal Africa: How can Africa remain a visible, important issue for citizens of the U.S.? This was in stark contrast to the 1980s, when a wide range of groups and organizations focused upon and fought over the country's relation with ranging from local church, labor, and student groups, to policymakers, lobbyists, and members of Congress in Washington. As the 1980s came to a close, however, a sense of unease appeared: Was Africa permanently falling off the landscape of public engagement and even the policymakers' map? The most dominant response to this worrisome trend has been a series of largely unknown but highly funded efforts to create a new for Africa, often led by African Americans. I argue below that these efforts from above are destined for failure, whether they be targeted at corporations or the broader public. What such efforts miss, or rather cannot engage, is the growing transnationalist political commitment to a trend linked to the rising tide of black nationalism. To seize this opportunity to create a more progressive community for Africa indeed even to perceive this possibility will require both academics and African activists to abandon neo-liberal, corporate and continentalist conceptions and thus most of the constituency building efforts to date. II. The Global and Historical Challenges

Lobbying for higher education: how colleges and universities influence federal policy

Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy, by Constance Ewing Cook. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998. 272 pp. $45.00 ($19.95) The past two decades have shown a marked increase in government's willingness to turn a critical eye toward higher education. Levine (1997) attributes this change in government behavior to higher education's status as a mature industry. Others point to a near-saturated enrollment market as well as increased competition for public resources from other sectors--such as corrections and health care--as cause for increased government scrutiny (Gibbs, 1999). Regardless of the exact reasons for the change, political sagacity has become requisite for effective higher education advocacy at both the state and federal levels. Constance Ewing Cook, in her text, Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy, discusses government relations at the national level and specifically examines the lobbying efforts of the major Washington higher education associations. Cook's text is based in part on a 1994 survey, in which she obtained responses from more than 1500 college and university presidents regarding their membership, thoughts, and satisfaction with the and their federal relations efforts. The Big Six are the higher education associations ACE, AASCU, NAICU, AAU, AACC, and NASULGC. Cook's research builds on a similar unpublished survey, which was conducted in 1979 by University of Michigan professor Joseph Cosand. The findings from both studies provide a framework for Cook's analysis, as well as a basis for comparison regarding the need for, and effectiveness of, the Six's federal relations efforts over the past two decades. In the opening chapters of the text, the author provides a historical overview of the and of the associations' early lobbying efforts. Cook devotes the remainder of the text to describing and analyzing the relationships among the as well as the lobbying efforts of these organizations during the 1990s. She illustrates that some of higher education's most important lobbying lessons have been learned by virtue of its failures. One example is the decision to award federal financial aid directly to students, instead of institutions, which was mandated by the 1972 Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization. The federal mandate for the creation of State Postsecondary Review Entities (SRPEs), part of the 1992 HEA reauthorization, provides another illustration. The most critical challenge the federal higher education lobby has ever faced, according to Cook, was the arrival of the 104th Congress in Washington. This congress, which represented the first dual branch Republican majority since Truman's administration, had slashing spending as its primary agenda. Further, the Republicans perceived higher education as a relatively easy target. Higher education leaders were appropriately concerned about the change in congressional leadership, and the associations stepped up their lobbying efforts in response. They also utilized some different lobbying techniques, such as ad hoc coalitions and the mobilization of campus-based resources, in their effort to convince Congress of higher education's importance and need. …

The Sigmund Freud Museum Exhibit: The Price for a Bit of Good Luck

The Museum Exhibit on the life and works of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis opened at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC on October 15, 1998. The Exhibit includes both praise and critical commentary regarding Freud's many contributions. Original documents, artifacts and personal items from Freud collections are on display as well as film clips, photographs, and other recordings. Different periods in Freud's life are highlighted. After leaving Washington, DC, the Exhibit will travel to New York, Los Angeles, and on to Vienna.

A "Dukedom Large Enough": The de Grummond Collection.

A “Dukedom Large Enough”: The de Grummond Collection Anne Lundin (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Cover of Randolph Caldecott’s Queen of Hearts London; Routledge, 1881. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Alphabet cards (ca. 1820). Reflecting on the loss of his dukedom, the dispossessed and philosophical Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” says, “My library was dukedom large enough.” That must be the conviction of many a book collector whose holdings are properties of sentimental attachment and small universes of knowledge. Many of the major research libraries of the world—the Bodleian at Oxford; the Huntington in San Marino, California; the Houghton at Harvard; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.—were once in private hands. Two of the major children’s literature research collections in the United States—the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota and the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi—were the creation of indomitable collectors whose holdings helped to preserve original materials and rare books and to shape the nature of scholarship in the field. Irvin Kerlan, M.D., donated his collection of award-winning books and manuscripts to the University of Minnesota to build a collection. Lena de Grummond, Ph.D., built a collection herself while working on the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi. The legacy of both these collectors is enormous in the field, but my interest is in Lena de Grummond and her unique kind of collecting and institution-building. I worked at the de Grummond Children’s Literature Research Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for five years (1987–1992) as an assistant curator which is when I became intimately involved with the collection. I met Lena de Grummond on ceremonial occasions before her death in 1989, and I have written about the collection. 1 This is my first reflection on the collection after five years away, actively working as a scholar and teacher. From this distance, I am struck by how formative the collection was in shaping my own contextual sense of scholarship and the importance of the study of print culture. I am [End Page 303] still so impressed with how much one person can do; how a particular passion can work to such high purpose. Lena de Grummond (1899?–1989) came to the University of Southern Mississippi in her retirement. Born in Centerville, Louisiana, her education included an undergraduate degree from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and a master’s degree in library science and a doctorate in education from Louisiana State University. I like to speculate that Lena de Grummond was influenced in her library education by the powerful role model of Anne Carroll Moore (1871–1961), the legendary New York Public Library supervisor of work with children who trained a host of librarians and library educators in her expansive style, a style that involved much celebration of literature, an identification of the librarian as writer, and a sense of outreach. Dr. de Grummond worked in Louisiana for many years in various aspects of librarianship and teaching: a staff member of the Louisiana State Library, a high school teacher-librarian, and, until her retirement in 1965, a state supervisor of school libraries for fifteen years. She also wrote several historical novels with her daughter, Lynne Delaune, that were particularly significant in shaping her own perspective as an author interested in the authorship of others. 2 With the prospect of several teaching positions, Dr. de Grummond chose Hattiesburg for its sense of place—a picturesque college town in the piney woods of the neighbor state of Mississippi. When beginning to teach children’s literature in the library school, she became inspired by a new possibility in pedagogy. Teaching from one of the standard textbooks of the mid-1960s, she was frustrated by the flat presentation, the dry recitation of titles. How little could these textbooks communicate the creative process by which children’s books come into being! From her administration of school libraries across the state of Louisiana and from her own writing experience, she had met many authors and illustrators and had viewed firsthand the materials that...

Fighting for the first amendment: Stanton of CBS vs. Congress and the Nixon White House

Foreword by Walter Cronkite Introduction Congressional Subpoena The Selling of the Pentagon Staggers' First Hearing on the Subpoena Stanton: The Broadcast Executive Stanton in Washington Congress and Television News The White House Opposition Programming and The Selling of the Pentagon Is This Fight Really Necessary? You Are in Contempt Down to the Wire Dear Colleagues The Constitutional Debate: Historical Moment for the Press The Public's Interest On a Personal Note: Stanton's Departure Afterword Selected Bibliography Index

From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years, 1933-1945 (review)

146 SHOFAR Winter 1996 Vol. 14, No.2 and those from the "annexed territories" discriminated against Jews, nonetheless achieved a new level ofcommitmenttoward displaced persons by the American government. As it turned out, loose administration of the law allowed many more Jews to enter than the bill's authors intended. Genizi has written neither a dramatic nor a broadly conceived account, but one that contributes findings useful to the restructuring of our whole approach to the question of the role of antisemitism in immigration restriction before, during, and after the war. His findings concerning the crucial role voluntary agencies played in all periods suggest that they had far more to do with American refugee policy than previous views have allowed. Robert H. Abzug Department of History University of Texas From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years, 1933-1945, by David H. Shpiro. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1994. 208 pp. $79.00 (£49.50). Zionism has become a cornerstone of American Jewish life. Every major Jewish organization supports the state of Israel's right to exist. A summer in Israel has become the standard reward for completing one's high school Jewish education, while increasing numbers ofJewish college students choose to spend their junior year studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv University. Pro-Israel political action groups lobby the U.s. Congress in Washington, and thousands ofAmerican Jews board El AI jets every year as participants in a variety of missions to Israel. Even the once non-Zionist Reform movement boasts its own Zionist wing, the American Reform Zionist Association (ARZA). In From Philanthropy to Activism, David H. Shpiro reminds us that this was not always the case. He takes us back to a time when an American Jewish embrace of Zionism wrought profound fears of dual loyalty. While some American Jews, most notably Louis Brandeis, offered an ideological justification for American Zionism in the years before 1933, few of organized Jewry's major power brokers risked anything more than a philanthropic relationship to the Zionist movement in Europe and Palestine. America remained their promised land: any embrace of political Zionism compromised the good civic standing of American Jewry. Book Reviews 147 By 1945, though, all of that had changed. Jewish leaders from across the ideological spectrum called for the creation of an independent Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. A once splintered and hopelessly divided Jewish community forged important new bonds and, after years of infighting, launched a more unified campaign for Jewish national independence. "American Zionism," according to Shpiro, "had been converted from an apolitical, philanthropic entity into a powerful, wellorganized political influence group" (p. xi). Shpiro's book traces this transformation. Shpiro divides his book into seven chapters, arranged chronologically. After an introduction summarizingAmerican Zionism in the early twentieth century, Shpiro documents the internal feuding, strategic differences, and fear of overseas entanglement which paralyzed the movement from 1933 until at least 1942. The Jewish community faced an impossible predicament in these years: ideological disagreements split American Jewry from within, while any outward criticism of the British mandate in Palestine risked offending a powerful nation at war with the Jews' most brutal enemy. On the domestic scene, Jewish leaders feared that their calls for a Zionist state would fuel isolationist claims of American Jewish warmongering . little could be done in these years to bolster the Zionist cause. This bleak outlook improved in 1942 when American Zionists, gathered together at the Biltmore Conference, overcame many of their internal differences to forge a common political goal, "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the neW democratic world" (p. 101). The conference, which Shpiro identifies as a "watershed in the history of the Zionist movement in that it set forth, for the first time, a clear political goal for the movement," signaled two major changes in American Jewish life: sobering news accounts of Nazi atrocities reminded American Jews that they carried the lion's share of responsibility for their overseas brethren, and u.s. entry into the war freed the Zionist leadership to speak out more aggressively against Hitler (p. 71). In the final chapters, Shpiro focuses on...

Controversy regarding Freud. On the postponement of the Freud exhibit in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C

The heated public controversy about Freud and psychoanalysis that has been raging in America for a number of years has meanwhile found its way into major German dailies as well (Frankfurter Rundschau 5.1.1996; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11.1.1996; Die Tageszeitung 17.1.1996). Bohleber outlines the latest case of Freud-bashing in the United States, sparked off by plans for a Freud exhibition in Washington. Closer inspection of the motives and roots of the attacks on Freud lead to the hardly surprising conclusion that the popular parlour game "Freud Bashing" has crested the wave in a social climate marked by fundamentalist conservatism, the new prudishness, and a species of scientific puritanism born of blind belief in the "exact sciences". The main representative of this attitude in connection with psychoanalysis is Adolf Grünbaum, while "revisionists" like Jeffrey Masson and Frederick Crews are to be regarded rather as exponents of the sexual counter-revolution. Bohleber's article is intended as an introductory commentary on the following essay by Jonathan Lear.

1996 PM World Congress in Washington, DC

1996 PM World Congress in Washington, DC

Prelude and first decade, 1951–1961

The initiative leading to the establishment of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) was taken in 1949 by the Stuttgart based Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (GfW), who proposed to other astronautical societies that a conference should be arranged to establish mutual co-operation. The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) agreed to organize such a conference in London in 1951, but in the interim the Groupement Astronautique Français (GAF) arranged a preliminary meeting to set up the agenda for the London meeting and to define its objectives. Representatives from astronautical groups in seven European countries and one South American society met in Paris in October 1950. Their meetings were preceded, on 30 September, by a large public gathering organized by the GAF, in the Sorbonne and was designated the Premier Congrès International d'Astronautique, a style which was to be adopted, in its English translation, for the subsequent annual conferences of the IAF. The representatives agreed that the objective of the London conference should be to create a federation of autonomous national astronautical societies, whose main purpose would be to provide an annual forum where these societies would meet. The London conference in September 1951, held in the City of Westminster, following the Paris precedent, was designated the IInd International Astronautical Congress. Astronautical and rocket societies from the ten countries were represented and became signatories to the agreement founding the IAF on 4 September 1951. The London congress set the pattern for subsequent congresses, in particular introducing technical lecture sessions. At the IIIrd Congress, held in Stuttgart, the first under the aegis of the newly founded IAF, a constitution was agreed and a Finance Committee was elected. The Constitution established that the Federation should be registered in Switzerland and be governed by a council of voting members—one only from each country. Subsequent congresses saw the gradual introduction of familiar federation institutions. At Zurich in 1953 a Credentials Committee, to screen applications for membership, was introduced and the publication of a regular journal proposed. The following year's congress at Innsbruck marked the establishment of the Astronautica Acta. In 1955 at Copenhagen the scope of membership was broadened to include institutional membership. The VIIth IAF Congress in Rome saw the introduction of the Nominations Committee to recommend candidates for the annual election of officers. The 1957 congress at Barcelona was the first astronautical conference of the space age, immediately following the launching of Sputnik 1. That congress saw the first formal submission of a proposal to set up an International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) though this was not discussed. At the Amsterdam congress in 1958, the number of papers increased to 80 and parallel sessions were introduced. The Xth Congress returned to the City of Westminster where a resolution founding the IAA was adopted, naming Theodore von Kármán as its Director. Immediately, editorial responsibility for the Astronautica Acta was transferred to the IAA from the Federation, taking effect from 1 January 1960. At the same congress a resolution founding an International Institute of Space Law (IISL) was approved. It was also resolved that the Federation should set up its headquarters in Paris. The XIth Congress at Stockholm had, as it main items of business, the inauguration of the IAA and the IISL. Proposals for the structure and statutes of the Academy were duly approved and 45 founding members appointed. The IISL statutes were also approved. The draft of a new IAF constitution, which had been scrutinized at spring meetings of the officers, was referred back to the committee. One of the main features of the draft had been the introduction of a Bureau made up of IAF officers and, ex-officio, the Director of the IAA and the President of the IISL. Pending the eventual adoption of the new Constitution, the Bureau would function informally. In 1961 the Federation as we know it today emerged beginning with the spring meeting in Paris, held in premises shared by the IAF and IAA, and with the Executive Secretariat in place. The main business was for the informal Bureau to meet with the committee responsible for the draft of the new constitution, to amend it to a form acceptable to all member societies. This done, the proposed new Constitution was submitted to the ensuing congress in Washington D.C. The XIIth Congress saw the IAF emerge from its adolescence to adult status. The new Constitution was approved and the Bureau was formally established. Henceforth, the plenary gathering of member societies was designated the General Assembly and reference to the IAF Council discontinued. A radical innovation was the creation of the International Programme Committee with future responsibility for planning and co-ordinating the congress technical lecture sessions. At Washington the first task of the Bureau was to draw up the Terms of Reference and the functional duties of this committee which have remained substantially unchanged.

Astronomy and space science from the moon: Panel discussion and perspectives

The COSPAR Symposium on “Astronomy and Space Science from the Moon”, held at the COSPAR/IAF World Space Congress in Washington (on 31 August–3 September 1992), ended with a session on “Scenarios for lunar bases and observatories”. A panel discussion was organised to address specific topics: • Precursor astronomy missions • Launch, landing and transportation systems, technologies • Site selection and emplacement, resource utilisation, architectural considerations • Link with space stations, and Mars exploration programmes • Human aspects, performance, protection, operations and activities • Protection of the lunar environment • Biospheres on the Moon The panel discussion, coordinate by B.H. Foing (F) included in particular contributions from Drs Matogawa (Japan), R.M. Bonnet (ESA), H. Balsiger (CH and ESA representative), P. Bochsler (CH), S. Volonté (ESA), W. Mendell (NASA), W. Sadeh (USA), R. Manka (USA), B. Burke (USA), M. Rougeron (CNES), V. Bluem (Germany) and from the general participants. We give here a summary of these discussions. We also include additional information for assessing the perspectives for Lunar based activities after the COSPAR symposium.

Digitisation of the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Throughout the world there are only a few major national libraries: the British Library in London, the National Library of Congress in Washington and the National Library of Canada. In 1995, the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France is due to be inaugurated. It aims to the world's first 21st Century national library and will offer readers and researchers 300 computer assisted reading stations, known in French as PLAO, from which digitised documents from the Bibliothèque's enormous archives can be read, annotated and compiled into in‐depth research projects on a wide variety of subjects.