ory prece

d forms

Public property.—Sale of public property and disposal of proceeds; Purchase of land for agricultural experiment farms; Land grants to various states; Use of flag on government buildings.

Public works.-Construction of Panama railroad; Direct employment of labor or contracts for public works.

Miscellaneous.-Legal holidays; Extension of patents for designs; Standard time; Protection of American citizens abroad; Naturalization of honorably discharged soldiers; Quarantine stations; Consent of Congress to contracts and agreements between states.

The purpose of the Member making inquiry was often not disclosed, but it was evident that in most cases he desired to obtain a compact and reliable statement of existing law, either as a preliminary to drafting a bill to amend or supplement it, or as a means of determining what changes some pending bill would effect if enacted into law-in fact a report on such changes was specifically requested and furnished in the case of the bill to provide civil government for Porto Rico, various bills relating to the Court of Claims, and certain provisions of the Farm Loan bill.

In certain cases, however, he desired to find statutory precedents for a bill or resolution which he wished to introduce. Closely related to these were the inquiries for standard forms of bills and resolutions for particular purposes, e. g., creation of a joint congressional committee of inquiry or an international joint commission, establishment of a collection district, reinstatement in the Army or Navy, etc,

memoranda on the interpretation of various words and phrases.

Statements regarding attempted legislation in previous Congresses on matters of recurrent interest were also called for during the session, e. g., the inheritance-tax provisions in the Payne tariff bill and the dumping duty clause in the Underwood tariff bill, passed by the House of Representatives but stricken out in the Senate, and the various proposals for the Federal incorporation or licensing of concerns engaged in interstate commerce.

A large and important group of inquiries related to constitutional questions and involved the digesting of Federal court decisions and the compilation of pertinent material from the debates in the Federal Convention and other documents of constitutional history, the collections of congressional precedents, and the leading treatises on constitutional law. As might be expected, the majority of these queried whether a particular piece of proposed legislation came within the scope of the powers of Congress. Among such matters were delegation to a tariff commission of power to fix tariff rates, regulation of ocean freight rates, prohibition of interstate commerce in convict-made goods, Federal jurisdiction concerning game, and over land purchased by the United States without the consent of the State in which it is located, taxation of aliens and of American income and property of persons living abroad. These required discussion of the limits of powers expressly granted to Congress. But in other cases authorities were cited to indicate the line of demarcation between the legislative and executive powers, as, for instance, in-reference to control of foreign affairs and

B

Con

law

Constitutional

amendments

the delegation of powers to the heads of departments; or to outline the field from which Congress is excluded by powers expressly granted to the President, e. g., in relation to pardons and recess appointments, or by privileges of the Judiciary, as in the case of the proposal for superannuation of Federal judges.

Two questions involving the constitutional status and qualifications of Senators and Representatives became of special interest during the session and briefs were prepared in response to inquiries regarding them, viz, whether a Member of Congress is an officer of the United States and under what conditions a National Guard officer becomes disqualified to serve as a Member of Congress.

Another subject involving points of both constitutional and parliamentary law, viz, contempt of Congress, may be included here, although in the pending case only comparative material, which bore on the question indirectly by analogy, was actually prepared. This consisted of digests of court decisions on contempt by publication, contempt of a grand jury, and unlawful interference with witnesses in Federal courts, together with a memorandum on the jurisdiction of British courts in cases of contempt of Parliament.

The efforts to secure submission to the States of the woman suffrage and prohibition amendments to the Federal Constitution brought requests for information regarding the actual operation of Article v in the matter of ratification, and reports were accordingly prepared showing dates of proposal and ratifications of Amendments I to XVII, the history of amendments proposed but not ratified by three-fourths of the States, attempts in Congress to regulate ratification, provisions of State constitutions relating to ratification of amendments to the Federal Constitution, and a record of all applications of State legislatures for a convention for proposing amendments.

tention that qualifications for voting and regulation of the liquor traffic should be left to the individual States.

pi

State laws of direct importance to Congress are mainly confined to those relating to matters on which the Federal la legislative power may be exercised either to supplement or to supersede the enactments of the State legislatures, or which fall within the scope of the legislative powers of both the Federal and the State Governments. This is illustrated by the list of the subjects of digests and compilations of State laws prepared in response to requests.

Thus in connection with the consideration of the childlabor bill, a tabular comparison of certain features of the child-labor laws of the States was prepared; and for use in the discussion of rural-credits legislation, digests were made of the State laws relating to cooperative associations, establishment of branches of State banks, establishment and regulation of markets, and taxation of farm mortgages. A digest of State inheritance tax laws served to indicate the extent to which the several States had availed themselves of this source of revenue.

A statement regarding State regulation of water-power development in Colorado and Utah was needed in the discussion of the water-power bill. National defense legislation brought inquiries for State laws giving preference in employment to honorably discharged soldiers and sailors and a digest of court decisions under State military laws on the subject of the militia in the service of the United States. A report on the assignability of personal injury claims was furnished as data for certain committee amendments to the bill providing compensation for Government employees in

64394°-16-10

campaign expenditures were doubtless responsible for the considerable interest shown in questions of election law. The special topics on which digests or tabular comparisons were prepared were as follows: Delegates to national conventions; presidential primaries; open and closed primaries; registration of voters; powers of local registration officials; property qualifications for electors; poll taxes; limitations. on campaign expenses of candidates for United States Senator and Representative in Congress and of party committees under State laws in force.

Regulation of lobbying, proposed in several bills, was another matter directly affecting Congress itself, on which a digest was prepared showing how the State legislatures had attacked the problem by statute or rule of procedure.

With such exceptions as these, the field of legislation which belongs particularly to the States is, as a rule, of interest to Congress only, in so far as it is suggestive for the framing of similar statutes for one of the local divisions of the Federal jurisdiction, i. e., the District of Columbia, Alaska, the Territories and insular possessions. Thus, there were prepared in connection with the consideration of bills relating to the District of Columbia, digests and compilations of State laws on the use of the public schools as community centers, fraudulent advertising, the use of the flag in advertising, the unlawful use of insignia of fraternal and similar organizations, and in connection with the Alaskan fisheries bill a tabular comparison of license taxes on fisheries in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.