Book Reviews: Constitutions and Constitutional Trends since World War II. By ARNOLD J. ZURCHER (ed.), CARL J. FRIEDRICH, EDWARD G. LEWIS, JOSEPH DUN-NER, FERDINAND A. HERMENS, JOHN BROWN MASON, ADAM B. ULAM, ROBERT G. NEUMANN, and KARL LOEWENSTEIN. (New York: New York University Press. 1951. Pp. viii, 351. $5.00.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591295200500433
• Author: Dell G. Hitchner
• Published date: 01 December 1952
• Date: 01 December 1952
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Constitutions and Constitutional Trends since World War II. By ARNOLD
J. ZURCHER (ed.), CARL J. FRIEDRICH, EDWARD G. LEWIS, JOSEPH DUN-
NER, FERDINAND A. HERMENS, JOHN BROWN MASON, ADAM B. ULAM,
ROBERT G. NEUMANN, and KARL LOEWENSTEIN. (New York: New
York University Press. 1951. Pp. viii, 351. $5.00.)
Some fifty states have adopted new constitutions in the years since
1945. This volume of eleven essays, delivered originally at the 1949
meeting of the American Political Science Association, and now rewritten
and elaborated, has sought to examine this phenomenal formulation of
constitutional documents, and so far as short experience permits, to
evaluate some of their significant aspects, especially with reference to
those of Western Europe.
Despite the declining popular esteem for written constitutions by
the end of the interwar years, postwar European states, as well as those
in Asia and Indonesia, have all chosen to establish their new political
systems upon the basis of such documents. In three valuable general
essays, Professors Zurcher, Friedrich, and Loewenstein conclude that the
prognosis for their future is almost entirely negative, seeing them as
essentially nineteenth-century instruments which re-establish machinery
and repeat orthodox formulas that have been inadequate and disappoint-
ing in the past. Built upon &dquo;stale compromises,&dquo; they fail to touch the
most vital political problems calling for decision; they attempt only
mechanistic defenses against the breakdown of parliamentary government;
they flow from the &dquo;negative distaste for a dismal past&dquo;; and they display,
finally, the &dquo;lack of moral unity in the societies that have promulgated
them.&dquo; There has been little inclination to profit from American and
British experience with constitutionalism, except for limited experiments
with judicial review.
Professor Lewis finds an over-all movement toward improved systems
of legislative representation, but notes a continuing...