Civil office

“ Any one under certain conditions can enter Parliament, but the Civil Service Commissioners bar the entrance to the Government offices with equally certain regulations. For the sake of argument let me assume that you are in the House. You have stood for Slocum-on-the-Marsh, and have persuaded the Slocum-on-the-Marshers to elect you. As an M.P. you are duly qualified to accept any appointment under the Crown when the Government ask you. The best plan is to think of an office and then add one to it—yourself.
"Why not the Public Squander Department?" you ask yourself. ”

“ No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office. ”

“ Civil Secretary's office.In the ordinary course of public business in the Colony, almost all matters come, in fact, before the Governor, or his immediate assistant, the Civil Secretary of the Province. The Civil Secretary's office is, in fact, the one general public office in which almost every species of business originates, or through which it passes in some stage or other. ”

“ We are likely to have a fierce fight about the civil service law in Congress next winter. In my humble opinion a strong word in favor of the merit system in your annual message, and some out spoken statements to the same effect in the reports of the Secretaries, especially those of the three great patronage Departments, the Treasury, the Post-Office and the Interior, would be half the battle. ”

“ Up there in the big office-rooms, year in year out, these refined, well-educated women kept ledgers and accounts and did the general office work of the Civil Service with a precision and neatness and correctness equal to the work of any men, and invariably to the astonishment of any interested visitor who was permitted to inquire into the system. ”

“ The requisition of the public force within the interior of the realm belongs to the civil officers, according to the regulations determined by the legislative power.
11. If disorders disturb an entire department, the king, under the responsibility of his ministers, shall give the necessary orders for the execution of the laws and for the re-establishment of order, but subject to informing the legislative body thereof, if it is assembled, and of convoking it, if it is in recess.
12. The public force is essentially, obedient; no armed body can deliberate. ”

“ Powers. General powers of legislation under the constitution. Elects U. S. Senators, County and City Electoral Boards, Auditor of Public Accounts, Second Auditor, Register of the Land Office, Superintendent of Public Printing, the Judges of the Commonwealth; decides contests in the election of Governor and Lieutenant- Governor; confirms or rejects nominations of certain officers made by the Governor, the State Board of Education, etc.
Powers means what the General Assembly has power to do. Legislation is the making of laws. ”

“ For the administration of the Act a Civil Service Commission is created, consisting of two members appointed by the Governor in Council, who are to have no other office or employment, and who may employ necessary assistance for the examinations they conduct. ”

“ Previous to the organization of the general 193 assembly the governor shall appoint such magistrates, and other civil officers, in each county or township, as he shall find necessary for the preservation of the peace and good order in the same. After the general assembly shall be organized the powers and duties of magistrates and other civil officers shall be regulated and defined by the said assembly; but all magistrates and other civil officers, not herein otherwise directed, shall, during the continuance of this temporary government, be appointed by the governor. ”

“ In 1883 Congress passed the Civil Service Act, allowing the president to select a board of examiners on whose recommendation appointments are made. Candidates for office are subjected to an easy competitive examination. ”

“ II. According to the constitution of the General Assembly, to nominate and commissionate, the several judges, members and officers of the courts, whether magistratical or ministerial and all other civil officers, coroners, &c. and their commissions, powers, and authority to revoke at pleasure: provided, that they appoint none but such as are freeholders in the Province aforesaid, unless the General Assembly consent. ”

“ No person while employed by, or holding any office in relation to, any transportation or transmission company, or while in any wise financially interested therein, or while engaged in practicing law, shall hold office as a member of said commission, or perform any of the duties thereof. At least one of the commissioners shall have the qualifications prescribed for judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and any commissioner may be impeached or removed in the manner provided for the impeachment or removal of a judge of said court. ”

“ The same evils that the Federal Civil Service Act was designed to remedy exist to a large degree in many of the state governments, and are especially aggravated in the administration of the local governments of some of the larger cities. The chief, if not the only,State examina-
tion. test of fitness for office in many cases has been party loyalty, honesty and capacity being seldom more than secondary considerations. The result has been the fostering of dishonesty and extravagance, which have brought weakness and gross corruption into the administration of the local governments. ”

“ The functions of the legislature are originative, those of the judiciary expository, and those of the President executory. The one gives birth to that which the other expounds and explains, and the third, when understood and explained, carries into effect. To create an office, then, is in its nature a legislative function. And to define and fix the tenure of an office which is in the process of creation, is also in its nature a legislative function. ”

“ Considering the judicial system as the chief pillar upon which our National Government must rest, I have thought it my duty to nominate, for the high offices in that department, such men as I conceived would give dignity and lustre to our National character, and I flatter myself that the love which you bear to our country and a desire to promote the general happiness will lead you to a ready acceptance of the enclosed commission which is accompanied with such laws as have passed relative to your office. ”

“ Elective functions—Deputation—Elective councils.—There is a whole class of functionaries, if it be permitted to say so, who owe their origin to election, and who are the mandataries of the people, either in municipal councils, or in general councils, or in the great elective bodies of the State, the Senate and House of Representatives. (See Civil instruction.) The principle of the sovereignty of the people requires that for all its interests, communal, departmental or national, the country have a deliberative voice by means of its representatives. ”

“ These limitations confront us at whatever point we consider American law and government. Sovereignty,—the people of the United States, or the people of a State,—has never delegated all its powers to government, and never any of them without limitations.353 Written constitutions are limitations of delegated powers. But powers delegated to what we commonly call a department,—as the legislative, the executive, or the judicial,—are sufficient for the necessary and proper performance of the functions (or as constitutional law would say, “execution of the office”) 165 of the department. ”

“ The mere fact that appointment to so many offices has been taken from the discretion of the executive means that so many the fewer friends can be rewarded. The successive reports of the Civil Service Commission show that, although every campaign brings to light new methods of circumventing the law, assessments are really becoming much less common ”

“ The Constitution has not only made a general delegation of the legislative power to one branch of the Government, of the executive to another, and of the judicial to the third, but it has specifically defined the general powers and duties of each of those departments. ”

“ It may be a peacetime disaster such as a flood, tornado, fire, hurricane, blizzard or earthquake. It could be an enemy nuclear attack on the United States.
In any type of general disaster, lives can be saved if people are prepared for the emergency, and know what actions to take when it occurs.
With the aid of Federal and State governments, cities and counties in all parts of the country are developing their local civil defense systems--the fallout shelters, supporting equipment and emergency plans needed to reduce the loss of life from an enemy attack. ”

“ To establish a civil service system by means of which the routine offices and employments of the commonwealth may be filled by appointments made after ascertainment of qualifications and fitness, and the incumbents of such offices may retain them during good behavior. ”

“ By reason, also, of its popular origin, and the frequency with which the short term of office of its members requires the renewal of their authority at the hands of the people,-the great source of all power in this country,-encroachments by that body on the domain of co-ordinate branches of the government would be receive with less distrust than a similar exercise of unwarranted power by any other department of the government. ”

“ It is to be hoped that an act, so necessary to the proper legal appointments of the public service, and reasonable justice to faithful and competent employes, will be considered and enacted at the coming session of Congress.
The operations of the civil service, so far as this Bureau is concerned, have been highly satisfactory. There is an increased demand for accuracy and efficiency in the manner in which the public work is performed. ”

“ Local legislative bodies, for example,—in America, state legislatures and in England, county councils,—might confer rank on a limited number of men or women yearly; juries drawn from certain special constituencies, from the roll of the medical profession, or from the Army, might assemble periodically to nominate their professional best, the Foreign or Colonial Office might confer recognition for political services, the university governing bodies might be entrusted with the power—just as in the middle ages many great men could confer knighthood. ”

“ Any government fit for a high state of civilization would have as one of its fundamental elements a small body, not exceeding in number the members of a cabinet, who should act as a Commission of Legislation, having for its appointed office to make the laws. ”

“ People have been warned of impending storms and similar dangers, told how to protect themselves, sheltered from the elements, fed and clothed, treated for injury and illness, and given help in resuming their normal lives. Experience has shown that as cities, counties and towns develop their systems to preserve life under nuclear attack conditions, they also become better prepared to deal effectively with peacetime disasters.
In cooperation with the U.S. Office of Civil Defense and the States, many local governments are improving their civil defense systems by preparing community shelter plans. ”

“ Lastly, to the total assemblage of the persons by whom the several political operations above mentioned come to be performed, we set out with applying the collective appellation of the government. Among these persons there commonly is some one person, or body of persons whose office it is to assign and distribute to the rest their several departments, to determine the conduct to be pursued by each in the performance of the particular set of operations that belongs to him, and even upon occasion to exercise his function in his stead. ”

“ The problem of civil service reform is rendered difficult by a misalliance between the Executive and the Legislative branches of our Federal Government. Those Members of Congress who favor the Administration habitually claim and are awarded a virtual monopoly of the Federal offices in their respective States or districts, dictating appointments and removals as interest or caprice may suggest. ”

“ Essential to the survival and to the growth of our national government is its power to fill its elective offices and to insure that the officials who fill those offices are as responsive as possible to the will of the people whom they represent. ”

“ It is now the national civil service law. The fundamental principles of this law are:— (1) selection by competitive examination for all appointments to the “classified service,” with a period of probationary service before absolute appointment; (2) apportionment among the states and territories, according to population, of all appointments in the departmental service at Washington; (3) freedom of all the employees of the government from any necessity to contribute to political campaign funds or to render political services. ”

“ The Chamber shall have power to create departments for the transaction of all business connected with the affairs over which it has jurisdiction, and to appoint and dismiss chief and subordinate officials for such departments, to fix the term of their office, and to fix and pay their salaries ”

“ Additional research cited in a report from the Department’s Office for Civil Rights found transgender youth were more likely to report feeling unsafe at school and being bullied, and that the COVID-19 pandemic harmed their mental health. Some transgender students experience multiple forms of discrimination at once, including race, gender or disability discrimination, which amplify the challenges they face. ”