More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Americans have therefore divided the rights of inspection and complaint like all other administrative functions.
it is above all to particular interest that American legislation appeals;
American legislators show but little confidence in human honesty; but they always suppose man to be intelligent. They therefore rely most often on personal interest for the execution of the laws.
When an individual is positively and currently wronged by an administrative offense, they understand, in effect, that personal interest guarantees a complaint.
Above the county magistrates there is, to tell the truth, no longer administrative power but only a governmental power.
GENERAL IDEAS ABOUT ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
cast a general glance at the rest of the Union.
As one descends toward the south, one perceives that township life becomes less active;
the spirit of the township is less awake and less powerful.
these differences
become less striking when one moves toward the northwest.
Most of the emigrants who go to found the states of the Northwest come from New England, and they carry the administrative habits of the mother country to their adopted country. The township of Ohi...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
as one moves away from New England, the life of the township passes in a way to the county.
becomes the great administrative center and forms the intermediate power between the government and plain citizens.
the organization of the township and the county in the United States rests on this same idea everywhere: that each is the best judge of whatever relates only to himself, and is in the best position to provide for his particular needs.
The state governs and does not administer.
The first consequence of this doctrine has been to have all the administrators of the township and the county chosen by the inhabitants themselves, or at least to have those magistrates chosen exclusively from among them.
no one has been able to introduce rules of hierarchy anywhere.
Administrative power is found diffused in a multitude of hands.
Since administrative hierarchy exists nowhere, since administrators are elected and irrevocable until the end of the mandate, there has followed the obligation to introd...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
election of administrative officials or irremovability from their offices, absence of administrative hierarchy, introduction of judicial means into the secondary government of society—such are the principal characteristics by which one recognizes American administration from Maine to Florida.
There are several states in which one begins to perceive traces of administrative centralization. The state of New York is the most advanced along this track.
officials of the central government exercise, in certain cases, a sort of surveillance and control over the conduct of secondary bodies.40 In certain others they form a kind of court of appeal for deciding affairs.41 In the state of New York, judicial penalties are employed less than elsewhere as an administrative m...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
ON THE STATE
LEGISLATIVE POWER OF THE STATE
two assemblies; the first generally bears the name of Senate.
it is by concurring in the choice of officials that it ordinarily enters the sphere of executive power.
The other branch of the legislature, ordinarily called the House of Representatives, participates in no administrative power and takes part in judicial power only by accusing public officials before the Senate.
the term of senators is generally longer than that of representatives. The latter rarely remain in office more than a year; the former ordinarily sit for two or three years.
By dividing the legislative body into two branches, Americans did not therefore want to create one hereditary assembly and another elective; they did not intend to make one an aristocratic body and the other a representative of democracy; nor was their goal to give in the first a support to power, while leaving to the second the interests and the passions of the people.
To divide legislative strength, thus to slow the movement of political assemblies, and to create a court of appeal for the revision of laws—such are the sole advantages that result from the current constitutions of the two houses in the United States.
Alone among all the united republics, Pennsylvania had at first tried to establish a single assembly.
They were soon obliged to change the law and to constitute two houses.
ON THE EXECUTIVE POWER OF THE STATE
The executive power of the state has the governor for representative.
The governor of the state in fact represents the executive power; but he exercises only some of its rights.
placed next to the legislature as a moderator and counsel. He is armed with a suspensive veto that permits him to stop or at least to slow movement at his will.
The governor gathers in his hands all the military power of the state.
Yet the governor does not enter into the administration of townships and counties, or at least he takes part in it only very indirectly by the nomination of justices of the peace which he cannot afterwards revoke.
The governor is an elective magistrate.
only one or two years,
ON THE POLITICAL EFFECTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE DECENTRALIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES
two very distinct kinds of centralization exist,
Certain interests are common to all parts of the nation,
Other interests are special to certain parts of the nation,
To concentrate the power to direct the first in the same place or in the same hand is to found what I shall call governmental centralization.
To concentrate the power to direct the second in the same manner is to found what I shall name ad...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Under Louis XIV, France saw the greatest governmental centralization that one could conceive of,
“L’Etat, c’est moi,”*11 he said; and he was right.
Nevertheless, under Louis XIV there was much less administrative centralization than in our day.
