564 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



confuses it with the science of the administration, in which the 

 Emperor and the administration of the Post-Office Department, 

 the Reichstag and the Kreisordnung, are treated in the same manner, 

 to the absolute expulsion of every political judgment. The method 

 exercises a remarkable witchery in Italy 1 and in France 2 as a reaction 

 of the juridical rigorism against the intervention of parliamentarism 

 in the justice and in the administration and also for the importance 

 and the worth of German works of public right, for the ever magnifi- 

 cent and classic construction of the theories, but it cannot be received. 

 It has succeeded in Germany in order to the federal constitution of 

 the Empire, juridical fundament like all the powers and the organ 

 of the state, and to the juridical means informing all the German 

 science. But the Emperor did not consent to the development 

 of parliamentary government, conserved even a kind of half-abso- 

 lutism, which we can approve of with a clever and active monarch, 

 but would become dangerous with any other. And before adopting 

 this method it is well to consider how badly founded is the belief 

 in the reign of logic in political institutions leading us towards all 

 the errors of the dogmatic constitutions and how vain the effort to 

 give to politics an exclusively juridical basis, the science of consti- 

 tutional law is not able to obey in its development the only juridical 

 criterion and would suffice to test it, the deformations to which in 

 fact are subjected the most particular and severe constitutions. 3 



The juridical method would give a false direction to whatever 

 constituent works; meanwhile it leaves political science disarmed in 

 face of the conditions and of the needs of the nation in the encom- 

 passing of which severe juridical formalism cannot follow all trans- 

 formations. Nevertheless, we cannot contradict wholly the tendencies 

 of parliamentary states, to give ever more to their institutions a 

 juridical foundation so that politics may be able to breathe in it, like 

 a vivifying air, but unable, however, to rust the machinery or to beget 

 injustices, violence, or any other kind of abuses. 4 Some others are 

 considering all political sciences as a branch of social science, or with 

 a greater exaggeration, perceiving in the state the most complex and 

 the most delicate organism, is acquiring for itself a place in the natural 

 history, speaking of its evolution, like that of other beings, and as- 

 serting audaciously that politics will become a science only with the 



1 Orlando, V. E., Trattato di Diritto Amministrativo, Milano, in 10 vols; Ma- 

 jorana, A., Lo Stato Giuridico; Stato Costruzionato. 



2 Hauriou, Principes de Droit Administratif et de Droit Politique, Paris, 1903, 

 pp. 137, et seq.; La Conception Juridique de I'Etat. 



3 Also for the American Federal Constitution see J. Bryce, American Common- 

 wealth, vol. I, p. 101 : " So hard is it to keep even a written and rigid constitution 

 from bending and working under the actual forces of politics." 



4 Gumplowicz, Sociology; Bendant, R., Sur I' Application des Methodes Socio- 

 logiques a I' Etude des Sciences Sociales, in the Revue de Droit Public, 1896, vol. v, 

 pp. 334-456; Deslandres, op. cit. xm, p. 297. 



