Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/285

Rh

success. This is the explanation of the circumstance that the constitution contains many express rules for the conduct of the parliamentary system, which in other countries is founded upon custom and convention, not upon written laws.

The Chancellor and, upon his suggestion, the Ministers of the Reich are appointed and dismissed by the President of the Reich. (Art. 53-)

In selecting the persons whom he might appoint, the President of the Reich is thus legally free, and is not confined, for instance, to the members of the Reichstag for his choice. But this is subject to precise conditions:

The Chancellor and Ministers of the Reich require for the exer- cise of their office to possess the confidence of the Reichstag. Any and each of them must resign if the Reichstag by an express vote withdraws its confidence from him. (Art. 54.)

The Chancellor lays down the guiding lines of policy and bears the responsibility for them to the Reichstag. Within these lines every Minister of the Reich conducts the affairs of the department which has been entrusted to him independently and on his own responsi- bility to the Reichstag. (Art. 56.)

The President of the Reich can, therefore, only appoint a Government which is able to obtain the support of a majority of the Reichstag; and only so long as it commands such support can it remain in power. The Chancellor and the Ministers form a Cabinet (Kollegium), at the head of which the Chancellor of the Reich corresponds to the English Prime Minister.

The President of the Reich has in regard to foreign and internal affairs all the prerogatives which usually belong to the constitutional head of a State; but the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace are effected by legislation of the Reichstag; and political treaties concerned with matters which form the subjects of legislation require the approval of the Reichstag (Art. 45):

All ordinances and dispositions of the President of the Reich, including those relating to the armed forces, require for their va- lidity the counter-signature of the Chancellor or of the competent Minister of the Reich. By the counter-signature responsibility is assumed. (Art. 50.)

This likewise applies to the dissolution of the Reichstag and to the institution by the President of the Reich of a referendum of the people upon decisions of the Reichstag. If the Ministry, supported by a majority of the Reichstag, refuses its counter- signature to these acts, the President of the Reich can appoint another Ministry, and can, with the counter-signature of this Ministry, dissolve the Reichstag. The people finally decide the matter by the general election.

The constitution draws a sharp distinction between political and legal responsibility; the latter signifies responsibility for the lawfulness, the former for the expediency and the success, of the acts of the Government. Political responsibility is not a legal question which could be decided by a court of justice by means of legal proceedings in accordance with statute law; it involves a judgment regarding political values, which is materially influenced by the party point of view. Political responsibility is, therefore, enforced by a vote of no confidence on the part of the Reichstag, entailing the resignation of the Ministry or of a minister, but involving no judgment at law. As a general rule the political responsibility of the Ministry covers the President of the Reich. It is only for the excep- tional case of an intolerable conflict between the President of the Reich and the Reichstag that, as the counterpart of the President's prerogative of dissolution, the Reichstag is similarly given the faculty of appealing from the elected to the electors. The Reichstag by a resolution, which must be carried by a two- thirds majority, can submit to the people a proposal for the deposition of the President. If this proposal be rejected by the popular vote, its rejection is taken to be equivalent to the re- election of the President for a fresh term of seven years, and it at the same time entails the dissolution of the Reichstag (Art. 43). Legal responsibility on the other hand is the same for the President of the Reich as for the Chancellor and the Ministers. On the proposal of at least 100 of its members the Reichstag can by a two-thirds majority impeach President, Chancellor or Ministers for having culpably violated the constitu-

tion or a law of the Reich. Judgment is given after regular proceedings at law by the Court for State Affairs (Staatsgerichls- hof) for the German Reich, invested with the independence of a Supreme Court of Judicature (Art. 59).

4. The Reich and the Territories. 1 Although the new con- stitution of the Reich did not originate, like the old one, in a federation of the separate states but in the national and demo- cratic unity of the people, it has not abolished the existence of the separate states. Notwithstanding the more compact organization of the national commonwealth and a considerable extension of its competence, the smaller commonwealths continue, although they are no longer called " States " (Staaleri) but " Territories " (Lander). Whether the German Republic should now be called a federation of States (Bundesstaaf) with strong national central authority, or a unified State (Einheitsstaat) with strong territorial decentralization, is hardly more than a theoretical controversy about terminology. A great obstacle in the way of genuine federal organization and at the same time of consistent political and administrative decentralization is the manner in which territory is distributed among the different German countries. This distribution arose out of the accidents of the dynastic policy of the former reigning houses. It is in many instances a patchwork of fragments of territory which have no real connexion with each other; and above all there is a vast disparity in the size of the territories. Prussia alone embraces in territorial extent and population four-sevenths of the whole Reich; it is therefore by one-third as large again as all the other territories put together and some hundred of times larger than the smallest of them. Corresponding with this proportion was the position of hegemony which Prussia enjoyed under the old constitution of the Reich, but which has now been completely abolished in constitutional law. Yet this has not solved the difficulty of treating as equals territories which are actually so unequal, whether federative organization or the decentralization of the functions of the Reich be the question at issue. The necessity of giving the new constitution a proper basis by a territorial rearrangement of the component parts of the Reich has certainly been acknowledged; but under the pressure of perils without and within this right idea could not for the pres- ent be carried out. The 25 territories were therefore provisionally taken over in their old extent; and the constitution of the Reich merely prescribes the procedure by which a rearrangement may be effected at some future date. Meanwhile seven of the smallest territories have spontaneously combined to form the single new territory of Thiiringen (Thuringia).

Within the organization of the Reich the individual ter- ritories are not represented, like the separate states of the American Union or like the Swiss cantons, by a separate House of Parliament, but only by a non-parliamentary body (Kollegium), the Council of the Reich (Reichsrat). The Reichs- tag consists of a single House. In the American Senate and in the Swiss Council of Estates (Standerat) there are two representatives of each separate state, elected by that state but representing the political opinion of their party. Not so in the Reichsrat. That body is composed of members of the Governments of the different territories or of substitutes ap- pointed by them, who speak and vote in the name of those Governments. In view of the vast disparity in the size of the different German territories it is impossible that each of them should have the same number of votes. Each territory has at least one vote and the larger territories several votes, in the main according to population. No territory, however, may have more than two-fifths of all the votes. Without this limitation Prussia alone would command a majority in the Reichsrat, so that the representation of the other territories would have no significance. Moreover, in future, half of the Prussian votes

1 The different countries and cities federated in the German Em- pire (Reich) of 1871-1918 were called States (Bundesstaaten). In the constitution of the new republican Reich they (e.g. Bavaria, Wiirt- temberg, Saxony, etc.) are designated Territories (Lander), but also in their political aspects Free States (e.g. Freistaat Sachsen, Bayern, etc.).