THE MULTIPLICITY OF STATUTES England or Germany are not found in the statute books, but in Orders in Council, Ministerial-Verordnungen, or similar docu ments. It cannot be denied, therefore, that to count the number of chapters gives a wrong impression of the actual amount of new legis lation annually produced in the United States as compared with other countries. We not only are inveterate devotees of the Anglo-Saxon habit of piecemeal law-making, but we include in a single volume, called statutes, a multitude of legislation which in other countries must be sought in a variety of different places and goes by all sorts of names. But after making all these allow ances, it were foolish to dispute that we are suffering from over-liberal doses of legisla tive medicine for our ailments. The reason for this, however, must not be sought in the wickedness of the legislators, nor even in the still greater depravity of corporate lobbies. No doubt that corrupt laws are sometimes passed. But their num ber is insignificant by the side of well-meant and honest, though often unwise, legislation. The real reason must be sought in the extent to which we have carried the principle of the separation of powers. As far as I know, there is at the present time no other country in which the legislatures actually perform their theoretical function of statute-making in the same independent manner as in the United States. Both in those countries like England, where the "government" is in effect a committee of the legislature, and in those like the German states, where the executive is independent of the legislatures, the actual work of preparing bills and intro
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ducing them is practically left to the execu tive. The legislature, though it may have the power of initiating legislation, rarely exercises it. This tends to unity of purpose in law-making, and very materially reduces the number of bills passed on. Besides, it improves the quality of the bills, because they are drawn by experts. In our legisla tures, every member feels himself obliged to introduce a number of bills, whether drawn by himself or others, and whether he under stands the subject or not. The multitudi nous committees of non-experts to which they are referred try their best to "kill" them, but many become law despite of all. Nobody knows just which of them will sur vive, and as there is no single committee that has cognizance of all, it is purely accidental if they do not contradict each other. Prob ably in no other country is it possible for a legislature unwittingly to pass several bills, the last of which by implication repeals the preceding one, thus defeating the intention of the law-makers. Examples of this sort are by no means rare in American legislative annals. The circumstance that this intolerable anarchy has been the practical result of our principle of the separation of powers does not necessarily lead to the condemnation of that principle. It merely proves that we have not adapted our machinery to the con ditions under which it works. The remedy will be found in some plan of submitting every bill, at some stage of its progress, to expert scrutiny. In what ways this can be done, it is not necessary to consider at the end of this article. SACRAMENTO, CAT.., August, 1906.
