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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Inquiries are ventures into the unknown. As instrumentalities of government, officially organized investigations are a relatively recent addition to the mechanism of politics. Leaving aside regular agencies of criminal procedure such as the grand jury, one may say that the emergence of investigating committees is closely connected with the growth of representative government. Parliamentary inquiries have come to be regarded as essential implements of legislative control over the executive branch. The present brief survey of German experience undertakes to show the potentialities and limitations of a different type of officially organized investigation: the executive inquiry.
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9 Bundesrat resolutions of January 31, 1874, and February 19, 1875.
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13 Act of June 26, 1878 (Reichsgesetzblatt, p. 129).
14 Article 82 of the Prussian constitution.
15 Article 20 of the Reich constitution.
16 The report was published December 22, 1878, as Drucksache des Bundesrats, No. 144 (Session of 1878–79).
17 The report was published March 21, 1884, as Drucksache des Bundesrats, No. 41 (Session of 1883–84).
18 Kanzler-Regulative of April 1, 1892, and January 29, 1894 (Zentralblatt für das Deutsche Reich, 1892, p. 166Google Scholar, and 1894, p. 19).
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21 One of the civil servants was also a member of the Reichstag.
22 Cf. Weber, Max, “Die Ergebnisse der deutschen Börsenenquete,” Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Handelsrecht, Vol. 43, pp. 87ff. (1895)Google Scholar. See also Göppert, , “Börsenrecht,” Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 4th ed., Vol. 2 (Jena, 1924), p. 1030Google Scholar.
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