Suchergebnisse

This study represents a preliminary inquiry into certain of the functional aspects of the natural law doctrine, particularly as it applies to American constitutional development. Throughout, the conceptual considerations, as such, will be ignored. Instead, the basic consideration will be one of usage. How does natural law work? What does it do? If this distinction seems arbitrary, the writer can only point out that law and politics are not theoretical studies; that they are the bone and sinew of society; that if the social order is to serve humanity with the greatest possible direction, it should know the proper functioning of its constituent elements. Natural law, like atomic energy, is important because it works, not because it was invented. And by the same token, it is best understood by a respectable familiarity with its usage, not by memorizing the symbols of its essence.The easy identification of natural law with the constitutional development of this country is apparent from even a cursory examination of the great body of constitutional doctrine. We have, for example, the whole concept of property relationships as they have come to us from the eighteenth century. We have a similar form-pattern in the development of certain processes of the law itself. We talk of the "reasonable man," or we invoke the "rule of reason." But the decisive characteristic of American constitutional development has been none of these. Rather it has been the acceptance of the working principle of negation. To avoid an enactment or a statute is considered, in this country at least, a valid exercise of authority. While it might be difficult to seek the legitimate derivation of such an action, or even to justify it, it is possible to consider its assumptions.

On September 23,19…, in Roscommon county in the Southern Peninsula of Michigan, the county clerk called the local officials together at the court house. Of the county administrators, the sheriff, treasurer, prosecuting attorney, circuit court judge, register of deeds, health and welfare administrators, and highway engineer were present. Many of the township supervisors had managed somehow to reach the court house in spite of the streams of refugees pouring northward from the destroyed industrial cities of southern Michigan. Already the county was bursting with new and unforeseen problems of public administration. The traffic jam on U. S. highway 27 from Lansing northward was something beyond the memory of the oldest living inhabitant. Near Houghton Lake, this traffic was jammed by another stream which had followed U. S. 23 northward from Saginaw and Bay City, turning inland at Standish by way of state highways 76 and 55 to connect with U.S. 27. The flight of stampeding and determined refugees was flowing like a river through the county seat of Roscommon and ever northward toward Cheboygan and Mackinaw City at the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan."This meeting was called," said the clerk, "to discuss how we can handle this emergency. One of the state police officers who has been on reconnaissance with a deputy sheriff will tell us what we are up against in this area. For 36 hours our telephone and telegraphic communications with Washington and Lansing have been out. We are on our own and must make the best of a terrible emergency."

The International Labor Organization (hereafter referred to as"I.L.O.") took the first steps toward establishing relations with a new organization which would replace the League of Nations in the spring of 1944. The 26th Session of the International Labor Conference, which met in Philadelphia in April–May, 1944—the first regular session held since 1939—adopted a resolution requesting the Governing Body of the International Labor Office "to take appropriate steps to assure close collaboration and full exchange of information between the I.L.O. and any other public organizations which now exist or may be established for the promotion of social and economic well-being."Acting on this recommendation, the Governing Body of the I.L.O., at its session of May, 1944, a few days after the close of the Philadelphia Conference, appointed a delegation composed of nine members of the Governing Body, its chairman, and the director of the International Labor Office, and authorized it to negotiate with any international authority in regard to the Organization's relationship to other international bodies. In January, 1945—still prior to the San Francisco Conference—the Governing Body reaffirmed the I.L.O.'s desire to be associated with the contemplated general international organization, "while retaining for the International Labor Organization the authority essential for the discharge of its responsibilities under its constitution and the Declaration of Philadelphia."At the invitation of the United States Government, the I.L.O. was represented at San Francisco by a consultative delegation. The position of the I.L.O. within the new framework was discussed at some length at the Conference.