Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1937. THE ROOSEVELT GOAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1937. THE ROOSEVELT GOAL

President Roosevelt's "greatest ambition" is to conclude his second term as President in 1941 with tlft knowledge that the nation has "powers to meet the modern needs of humanity." What are the "powers", that the United States Legislature and Administration are lacking? The answer seems to be "the powers of a unitary Government." In other words, if the United States were not a federalised concern, but a single. State consisting of one Legislature and one Government, the "powers" on which the President has his ambitious eye would be already possessed. Here in New Zealand we already have, and have long 'enjoyed, the one Legislature and .one Government. Results—legislation dealing with wage-fixing and hour-fixing (nearly half a century old) and with price-fixing have been accepted without any attempt to move the Supreme Court to declare them ■ unconstitutional. There has been no lesser Government (such as I State Governments) to stand in the way, and the Judges have not been compelled to consider from the legal standpoint questions of "powers"' on which hang tremendous party-poli-tical issues like the New Deal. Those "powers" to enact New Deals craved by the President are the possession already of single Legislature countries such as New Zealand.

The assumption that President Roosevelt's real quarrel is with his written Federal State Constitution, and that the lack of "powers" is the lack inherent in a Federal Constitution, is supported hy two tests of every-day experience. One is the already quoted experience of New Zealand, where, in the absence of federalisation, the "New Deal" powers have not been seriously questioned in courts and never have.been made a political embarrassment to Supreme Court Judges. The other test is that in Australia (where, at the beginning of this century, I the Federal Convention made the Commonwealth Constitution too much a ,copy of American models) the experience of the United States has been to a considerable extent duplicated, except that the Judges have never been charged so plainly by a Government as by President Roosevelt in America. The "dried fruits" case, which resulted in cer--1 tain inter-State trade restrictions being declared unconstitutional by the. Privy Council, is the culminating point to a long history of struggle for "powers" by Australian Federal [Governments (sometimes Labour, sometimes non-Labour) 'who feel just the same kind of political cramp under their Constitution as is felt by President Roosevelt. Normal experience, then, is that this federalised type of written Constitution throws up, anywhere, similar barriers to Governmental interference with trade and industry, The single Legislature type is not a barrier to New Deals, or only in relatively small degree. Returning, now, to the President's long-range Second-Term ambition — that he will quit in 1941 with the knowledge that the nation has "powers to meet the modern needs of humanity"—it merely boils down to a hope for "powers" that various other non-federalised Governments have long possessed. Have these other Governments "met the modern needs of humanity"? Do these other full-powered " Governments, possessors of sole sovereignty, find that "the modern needs of humanity" are easily met, once the "powers" coveted by President Roosevelt are enjoyed? And, when (if) .President Roosevelt in 1941 stands level with other Governments in the-matter of "powers," will the America of 1941 —no longer shackled by the restrictions Mr. Roosevelt complains of — find the economic-social problem any less difficult and elusive than unshackled Governments have found it? If "the modern needs of humanity" are merely waiting for "powers," either the non-federalised Governments have been very slow, or the post-1941 Governments of America are going to be very rapid in their action. But the assumption that human needs in America will be met by the coveted "powers" is hardly tenable. The fight to gain those "powers" may, however, satisfy American public opinion that Mr. Roosevelt is doing something. The fight may be big enough to fill the stage of the Second Term. The difference between the Australian plan of not blaming the Judges but of trying to amend the Commonwealth Constitution (the popular rejection of the amendment has been dealt with elsewhere) and the Roosevelt proposal to revise the 'retiring conditions and other terms on which Judges hold office, has already been pointed out. It need not :be stressed further. But let it be ! assumed, merely for argument's sake, that some old non-progressive Judges are "not sufficiently in tune with modem progress" to find reasons why the written Constitution should be made flexible enough to meet Mr. Roosevelt's "middle of the road" proposals. Let it be assumed, also, that ihe personnel of the

Bench is changed accordingly. Will this be a precedent for a future Left Government of U.S.A. to find judicial approval for its Left proposals by appointing still more agile Judges who will discover in the Constitution a still greater flexibility? The assumption —which requires a»great deal more proof than is forthcoming—that the real resistance to the New Deal is in the Judiciary and not in the Constitution seems to carry with it a free hand for an extreme Government in the future to alter the Constitution not by the straightforward but long and arduous path of constitutional amendment, but by finding Judges with interpretative talent of the right colour. -