The Place of Public Administration in a Changing Society
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1937.tb03003.x |
| Date | 01 October 1937 |
| Published date | 01 October 1937 |
| Author | R. C. Jarvis |
The
Place
of
Public Administration
in
a Changing Society
By
R.
C.
JARVIS
[Winning
Essay
in
the HaEdane
Essay
Com#etits’olz,
19371
INTRODUCTORY
HE
practice on the part
of
Parliament of delegating to depart-
T
ments of State authority
to
make and administer regulations
having
the force of law has of late occasioned very considerable
criticism. Post-war
social
and economic changes have been
so
rapid
in
time and
so
fundamental
in
nature
as
to be but little short
of
revolutionary; these changes have been reflected
in
State policy, and
have resulted
in
bold experiments
in
governance. Furthermore, ihe
conception of private liberties has suffered somewhat by the rise of
a more collective ideal, and as a result legislation has tended
to
be
less simple. Acts are passed
in
skeleton form, vesting powers of fuller
elaboration, really judicial and legislative in nature, in the adminis-
trative organs of the State.
It is
to
the exercise of these quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative
powers that criticism has been directed, but much of such criticism
has been directed not at all towards the collective ideals which this
system helps to effect, nor to the rapid changes
in
society,
of
which
the legislation is a reflection; criticism has
in
the
main
been rather
Iess fundamental. While prepared
to
admit some fair measure of
success to the venture as a whole
it
has
qualified the admission by the
contention that the practice offends against certain legalistic
canons,
and impinges upon the sovemignty of Parliament, no less a person
than the Lord Chief Justice, for instance, seeing the whole process
as
a conspiracy
on
the part of the administration to place depart-
mental activity entirely beyond the
law.
Lord Hewart sees the
administrator
as
“
a departmental despot
.
. .
.
.
at once scientific
and benevolent, but above all a law to himself
”
who, flouting the
sovereignty of Parliament and disregarding the
rule
of
law,
aims
“
to employ the one to defeat the other,
and
to establish
a
despotism
on the
ruins
of
both.”l
406
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