There is no country in which it is as important that the lawyers should be well educated for their profession, as it is in the United States. Here they hold a political position. They are a recognized part of the machinery of government. All are officers of courts that have the acknowledged power of interpreting constitutions and statutes, which may be invoked as grounds of action or defence in pending litigation, and of holding statutes inconsistent with a constitution so interpreted to be void. Other nations may confer on the judiciary a similar authority in terms, but nowhere else is the exertion of such authority common and accepted by all as conclusive. In the last resort, questions of constitutional law and statutory construction will be decided in a court, manned exclusively by those who have been trained for the bar, after hearing argument from lawyers who have been educated in the same manner.

The constitution of the American Bar Association has a standing committee on “Legal education and admission to the bar.” Their reports, from time to time, have been influential in securing action which, since the foundation of the association in 1878, has served to lengthen the general term of study required for the admission to the bar, to broaden the field of study, and to transfer the general place of study from a lawyer's office to a law school.

The submission of proposals for the abolition of the state senate to the people of Oregon at the two preceding general elections is occasion for a summary of considerations in reference to the bicameral system of legislation.

The bicameral system has been so long and so widely prevalent that until very recently its “necessity” has been almost universally regarded as “a demonstrated truth.” The British legislature, “the mother of parliaments,” is a development from the assembly of “estates.” Five distinct “estates” were present in the “Model Parliament” of 1295, but through the consolidation of interests, the organization of two legislative chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, was soon evolved. The origin of the bicameral system was thus “not owing to any conviction that two houses would work better than either one or three, but was a matter of sheer accident,” and was not “the invention of any clever constitution-maker.” The bicameral system of legislation, generally based upon English precedent, has usually followed the extension of constitutional government, and at present most national legislatures consist of two chambers.

The presidency, intended by the framers of the Constitution to be almost exclusively an executive and administrative office, has, in the course of a century and a quarter, not only augmented its executive and administrative authority, but also has acquired a marked political significance. To his constitutional powers the President has added the prerogatives of party leadership, which constitute him the organ for giving effect to the policies of his party at the same time that he exercises a potent influence in the formulation of those policies. The amazing growth of political parties in the United States and the perfection and strength of their organization have been the causes of astonished comment on the part of foreign observers. Moreover, ours has been, in the main, a country of two parties. In view of these facts, the President as party leader becomes a personage of incalculable political consequence. He possesses the political leadership of an English prime minister with the titular dignity which the prime minister lacks.

Since Jackson's time the presidency has achieved a representative character which is the natural result of the President's assumption of political leadership. He perhaps more accurately reflects the mind of the country at large than either of the houses of Congress. The Senate has been wanting in representative character, until the passage of the seventeenth amendment, because of the indirect mode of its election; while the Representatives, because the center of their interests is local rather than national and because their number has been a hindrance to decisive action, have distinctly lost in prestige. The President is able, and finds it to his advantage, to cultivate a nationalistic conception of his office.

The evolution of business organization is from the unsystematized through the systematized to the scientific. Governmental work—federal, state and municipal—is still almost exclusively in the unsystematized stage.

Among the causes of municipal inefficiency are the attempt to hamper and control the action of individuals by a multiplicity of petty restrictions unknown in private business, and the separation of the municipal service into scores of divisions with little or no mutuality of interest. Both of these practices tend to prevent group action in the large sense. But undoubtedly the greatest bar to efficiency is the unwillingness to trust the individual as shown by the attempt to thwart evil or selfish designs of the official by board control. This committee management is in my opinion, the most costly hallucination of democracy. As a present day cause of expensive and inefficient government, this bulwark of the stand patter, of special privilege, of the politician and of the crook makes other influences tending in the same direction such as the complacency of civil service and the lack of definite standards, seem almost negligible.

City manager government will soon be in effect over some 250,000 people living in eighteen cities. One hundred seventy five thousand of these people live in Dayton and Springfield—cities which are now completing their first year under this type of administration. Any deductions to be made regarding this type of government as it operates in the case of larger communities, must be drawn from the experience of these two municipalities over the past year.

A most common test of the character of government is economy, although that is no fairer criterion of worth than it is with shoes, furniture, or tobacco. Cheap government is not necessarily good government. Even were the revenue and expense schedules for the present year available, it would be difficult to make an impartial analysis and comparison of finances in Dayton and Springfield under the two types of government. In Springfield the most concrete evidence of economy has been the reduction of the floating indebtedness from $100,000 to $40,000, although the resources were slightly less than those of former years. In Dayton the net expenditures for 1914 from ordinary sources will be approximately $78,000 more than for the previous year. However, with this increase the general revenues were charged for street repair, street lighting, and emergency health work, formerly costing a much larger amount from bonds.

Mr. Upson has shown us very clearly what has been accomplished in practice under the city manager plan in Dayton. There are, however, some considerations in connection with the theory of the city manager plan which are worthy of attention, and I am glad that Professor Hatton touched upon the theory side in his remarks.

I am an enthusiastic advocate of the city manager plan and we have several cities in Texas operating under that form and others now considering its adoption, largely as a result of the support given to the plan by our bureau of municipal research and reference. At the same time, I am not without some very grave misgivings as to how the plan will work out in practice because of the all important question of the kind of men who will be chosen for these places.

Of course it is apparent that the men chosen must be chosen for their expert qualifications and not for political reasons. That is axiomatic. But it is to my mind almost equally important that the proper kind of qualifications be insisted upon. It is not enough that the city manager be a first class business man or manager in the ordinary sense. If he is no more than that I confess I do not look forward to much advance in municipal ideals and accomplishments under this new plan.

The idea of a unified and responsible court for a metropolitan district must not be looked upon as a competitor of the idea of a unified state court system; it is instead an elaboration of the state system intended to meet extraordinary conditions. The needs and conditions of administration in the great modern city are so different from those in rural districts that a system of courts applicable to a State which is wholly rural must necessarily be elaborated to adapt it to a State which has such a metropolitan center. In many cities the present situation is so desperate that it is plausible to hold that reorganization will come first in those cities and later in the States in which they are located.

In either case there will be no serious difficulty in adjusting the local court to the state system. And though we speak of it as a local court it is of course but the local agency for the exercise of a state function. The large city usually has suburbs which should not be excluded from the benefits of reorganization. The metropolitan judicial district may then be presumed to include the city, its suburbs, and such other territory as may be conveniently administered from the local center. In most instances this would mean the county in which the large city is located.

The intent of the framers of the judiciary act of 1801 has been to the present day a matter of some doubt. On the one hand it has been shown that alterations in the judiciary system of the United States had long been agitated before the failure of the Federalist party in the elections of 1800. Soon after the establishment of federal courts in 1789 relief had been sought by the justices of the supreme court from the arduous duties necessitated in riding the circuits. In 1799 a bill designed to establish a system of circuit courts was reported upon which action was postponed. But this later became the basis for the act of 1801. It has, therefore, been contended that, quite apart from the political advantage given the Federalists by the passage of the act of 1801, such changes in the judiciary system were warranted by necessity.

At the same time it is equally clear that the amount of business before the courts of the United States, although it had been excessive, had begun to decline. No further prosecutions were to be expected under the alien and sedition acts, and a decrease in the number of suits before the federal courts involving other questions was observed even before the accession of Jefferson to the presidency.