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power of the State, to which it is necessary to obtain the consent of the Diet. Such is one of the fundamental precepts of a constitutional government. No Bill, therefore, can become a law that has not passed through the Diet; nor can one become so that has passed through one House, but been rejected by the other.
38. When the Government makes the draft of a law, and by order of the Emperor submits it to the two Houses of the Diet as a Bill, they shall be competent to pass it with or without amendment, or to reject it. When either House deems it necessary that such and such a law should be issued, it may initiate a Bill for the one purpose. When a Bill, initiated by one House and passed in the other with or without amendment to it, shall receive the sanction of the Emperor, it shall become a law the same as in the case of projects submitted by the Government.
The Emperor shall have no relations with the Diet other than to order its convening, its opening and closing, and to give sanction to laws. He charges the Ministers of State, during the session of the Diet, with the drafting of laws and with public correspondence. Accordingly, such projects are said ‘to be submitted by the Government.’
39. The submission to the Diet of the same project for a second time during the same session not only infringes the rights of the Diet, but is likely to prolong the session for the discussion of a solitary matter. It has, therefore, been prohibited by the present article. The Constitution prohibits the evasion of the provisions of the present article by the laying for a second time before the Diet, under a new title and a new phraseology, a project that has been already rejected by the Diet.
A project of a law that has not been sanctioned by the Sovereign cannot be introduced into the Diet a second time during the session. This must be so out of respect to the sovereign powers of the Head of the State, and needs no explicit enunciation. Still, as to representations, it is stated that the same representations cannot be made twice during the same session. For while, on the one hand, whether a project of law be sanctioned or not lies with the Emperor, the acceptance or rejection of a representation, on the other, is in the power of the Government; so there is a distinction between the two as to their relative importance. It will therefore be observed that definite provisions have been made in the one case to avoid all doubt on the subject.
40. The present article shows that the Diet has the right of making representations. But in a preceding article the right of initiating projects of law has been given to both Houses.