The principal, indeed the desperate, task of democracy is to maintain itself; its second, to improve and refine itself. It is well to conceive our problem in practical terms, as it tends to sharpen and limit the inquiry; and, in a sense, part of the answer, at least, lies in the terms in which the question is posed. The problem is not an exercise in theory, but is urgently practical. So is the answer. But as all political science teaches, though it may come in institutional and psychological devices, in the background, promising and perhaps mocking, there is also the metaphysical element. And the last is inescapable. For this question needs solution: What Marxism is to Soviet Communism, and what Racialism is to the Nazi State, is X to Democracy. What is X?

For we cannot assume that uncultivated men and women, unshaped by their institutions that already exist, or without a doctrine, can operate the democratic form of government. If that were so, nobody would have thought of education. If the instinctive response of mankind to its social problems were democracy, or ineluctably something else, the political scientist could happily surrender his Ph.D. and close his college doors.

The future government of Italy portends a challenge of enormous magnitude for the Catholic Church. Subject as it has been to periodic attacks for reactionism, the Church has been hard pressed to throw off the stigma of its association with Franco in Spain and its willingness to deal with Mussolini's Fascist régime. In the light of these accusations, coupled with rather widespread doubt whether church orthodoxy is compatible with political democracy, it seems altogether appropriate to examine the political theories of one of the leading exponents of liberal Catholicism—Don Luigi Sturzo.

A little over twenty years ago, foreign correspondents, eagerly seeking a label for the “mystery man of Italian politics,” referred to him as a clerical socialist. If the term “clerical socialism” is synonymous with Christian socialism, such a characterization might be a proper one for this Sicilian priest. Certainly Sturzo was a champion of the Christian socialist movement which urged the correction of economic injustices but decried the materialism of the Marxists. He approved of the Guild of St. Mathew's sympathy for the unionism and socialism of the nineties and the Roman Catholic Social Guild. The latter found its incentive in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum and the “scholastic traditions in restraint of usury and economic injustice.” Both of these organizations were associated with Christian socialism. But, although Christian socialism and clerical socialism have occasionally been placed in the same category, the latter is too ambiguous a term to permit a precise classification.

There were no changes in the personnel of the Court during the 1943 term. Disagreement amongst the justices mounted sharply. In seventeen cases, four justices dissented; three dissented in twenty others. Two cases overruled previous decisions of the Court, bringing to twenty-four the total list of reversals since 1937. One of the two recent reversals, that in the very important case holding the insurance business to be interstate commerce, was effected by a minority of the justices, who divided four-to-three.

A. Questions of National Power

1. The war Power

Constitutionality of Wartime Price Control and Rationing. In a group of cases, the Court came to grips with the constitutionality and construction of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942. The most important of these was Yakus v. United States, involving a conviction in a federal district court in Massachusetts for a violation of the maximum prices fixed by the O.P.A. on the sale of wholesale cuts of beef. Yakus refused to obey the price regulation, declined to follow the procedure made available in the statute for protesting against it, and attempted in his criminal trial to challenge the validity of the price regulations and of the statute on which they rested. This he was not permitted to do. Speaking through Chief Justice Stone, the Gourt held the Emergency Price Control Act to be valid, not only in its substantive regulations, but also in the procedures set up for its enforcement. The Court's opinion dealt with four points.

In two recent articles in this Review, the writers examined in some detail the January 15, 1944, reorganization of the Department of State, and discussed the problem of organizing our national government for effective participation in world affairs. The purpose of the present article is to point out the main effects of the further reorganization of the Department announced on December 20, 1944, by Secretary Stettinius.

At the outset, it should be repeated that it would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of these reorganizations for the conduct of our foreign affairs. For in spite of the importance of international organization to world order, we should never forget that the smooth functioning of the international machinery we set up and the success of the peace we establish will depend in large measure upon how effectively the various states organize their national governments to carry on the complicated relations of the international community.

During the past year, the Department concentrated its attention on putting into effect the reorganization of January 15, 1944. Committees for the consideration of top policy questions were set up. Departmental functions were regrouped and consolidated.

The Administration's legislative program for 1944 was presented to Congress in the 1945 budget message and the state of the Union message. Subsequently, drafted bills from heads of departments, administrative agencies, and even the chief executive, were submitted for Congressional approval. But they either embodied or supplemented proposals contained in one of the two messages, or were of an incidental nature.

The state of the Union message set forth a five-point program, recommending that Congress adopt: (1) a realistic tax law, (2) a continuation of the law for the renegotiation of war contracts, (3) a cost-of-food law, (4) an early reënactment of the stabilization statute of October, 1942, and (5) a national service law. Having listed these proposals, the President concluded: “These five measures together form a just and equitable whole. I would not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of taxation, to hold the stabilization line, and to prevent undue profits.”

Many accusations are being made in England at the present time that an over-centralized bureaucracy is stifling local government. The Government's plans for local government in the postwar period tend, it is said, to abolish local self-government.

If any such trends are discernible, an examination of local-government developments in 1944 ought to reveal them, since that year was one of profound change for English local government. Nearly every service administered by local government was in some way affected. Some services were enlarged, others reduced. New services were added, old ones dropped. Central-local relations in the performance of these functions were in nearly every case altered. Even the relations between different units of local government were modified.

In the pages that follow, an attempt is made to summarize some of the most important changes made in 1944 in the services performed by local units and to indicate some of the trends which are manifest when the changes are viewed as a whole.

Does the concept of sovereignty under law necessarily involve a self-contradiction? That it does, has admittedly been held by the great majority of careful thinkers from the time of Hobbes to the present day. Nor has this been inconsequential. The belief that submission to an enforceable law would be a surrender of sovereignty has been a most potent obstacle to the substitution of the law court for the battlefield in the determination of international disputes. On the other hand, it is generally conceded that for the individual the only liberty worth seeking is liberty under law. It is the thesis of this article that sovereignty under law for the state is no more absurd than liberty under law for the individual.

The term “sovereignty” has been variously and elaborately defined, but for present purposes its essential elements may be listed as authority, equality, and liberty. The first-named attribute—authority—has its great importance in the field of constitutional law, which postulates that in every state there is some agency or combination of agencies possessed of the authority to control everything within the state. However, it is well known that the rise and spread of constitutionalism and federalism have rendered the concept of sovereign authority increasingly mystical. Even in Great Britain, the old simplicity of the sovereignty of “King in Parliament” has been complicated by the Parliament Act of 1911, and especially by the Statute of Westminster of 1931. To-be sure, it is easy enough to visualize sovereign authority in a dictatorial régime, but this arouses no envy on the part of those who enjoy other forms of government.