CONDITIONS AND METHODS OF LAW MAKING and more difficult, owing to the complexity of modern civilization, the vast scale of modern industry and commerce, the growth of new modes of production and distribu tion that need to be regulated, yet so regu lated as not to interfere with the free play of individual enterprise. III. Many of the problems which legistion now presents are too hard for the ordinary members and even for the abler members of legislative bodies, because they cannot be mastered without special knowledge. (It may be added that in the United States a further difficulty arises from the fact that legal skill is often required to avoid transgressing some pro vision of the Federal or a State Constitu tion.) IV. The above conditions make it desir able to have some organized system for the gathering and examination of materials for legislation, and especially for collecting the laws passed in other countries on subjects of current importance. V. To secure the pushing forward of measures needed in the public interest, there should be in every legislature arrange ments by which some definite person or body of persons become responsible for the conduct of legislation. VI. Every modern legislature has more work thrown on it than it can find time to handle properly. In order, therefore, to secure sufficient time for the consideration of measures of general and permanent applicability, such matters as those relating to the details of administration or in the nature of executive orders should be left to be dealt with by the administrative department of government, under delegated powers, possibly with a right to disapprove reserved to the legislature. VII. Similarly, the more detailed rules •of legal procedure ought to be left to the judicial department or some body com missioned by it, instead of being regulated by statute. VIII. Bills of a local or personal nature
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ought .to be separated from bills of general applicability and dealt with in a different and quasi-judicial way. IX. Arrangements ought to be made, as, for instance, by the creation of a drafting department connected with a legislature or its chief committees, for the putting into proper legal form of all bills introduced. X. Similarly, a method should be pro vided for rectifying in bills before they become law such errors in drafting as may have crept into them during their passage. XI. When any bill of an experimental kind has been passed, its workings should be carefully watched and periodically reported on as respects both the extent to which it is actually enforced (or found enforcible) and the practical results of the enforcement. A department charged with the enforce ment of any act would naturally be the proper authority to report. XII. In order to enable both the legis lature and the people to learn what the statute law in force actually is, and thereby to facilitate good legislation, the statute law ought to be periodically revised, and as far as possible, so consolidated as to be brought into a compact, consistent and intelligible shape. I venture to submit these general obser vations because at this time one observes everywhere an unusual ferment over eco nomic and social questions, and an unusually loud demand for all sorts of remedies, some of them crude, some useless, some few possibly pernicious. Here, in the United States, this ferment takes a form conditioned by your constitutional arrangements and your political habits. There seems to be in many quarters a belief that the State governments cannot deal with some of the large questions that interest the whole country. Yet there is also a fear to dis turb the existing balance of powers and functions between the State authorities and the National government. There is a feel ing that evils exist which governments ought to deal with, and for dealing with
