Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 5, 2025
It is one of Blackstone's maxims that in every constitution a power exists which controls without being controlled, and whose decisions are supreme. This power is represented in the United States by a small oligarchy of nine irremovable judges. I do not know of any more striking political paradox than this supremacy of a non-elected power in a democracy reputed to be of the extreme type.
But that conception of representation may spread which desires both to increase the knowledge and public spirit of the voter and to provide that no strain is put upon him greater than he can bear. A quantitative examination of the political force created by popular election shows the importance of the work of non-elected officials in any effective scheme of democracy.
This number has certainly grown since 1901 at an increasing rate, and consists of persons who give on an average at least four times as many hours a week to their work as can be expected from the average elected member. What ought to be the relation between these two bodies, of twenty-three thousand elected, and, say, two hundred thousand non-elected persons?
Do we aim at making election in fact as well as in constitutional theory the sole base of political authority, or do we desire that the non-elected officials shall exert some amount of independent influence?
Bright at the Leeds Conference of 1883 suggested, by which the power of the House of Lords this non-elected, this non-representative, this hereditary, this packed Tory Chamber by which the veto of that body shall be strictly limited." Mr.
To begin with, ought the elected members be free to appoint the non-elected officials as they like? Most American politicians of Andrew Jackson's time, and a large number of American politicians to-day, would hold, for instance, as a direct corollary from democratic principles, that the elected congressman or senator for a district or State has a right to nominate the local federal officials.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking