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5 S.D. L. Rev. 1 (1960)
Parkinson's Laws

handle is hein.journals/sdlr5 and id is 5 raw text is: South Dakota Law Review VOLUME 5 SPRING 1960 PARKINSON'S LAWS* By C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON** Parkinson's first law amounts to the simple assertion that work expands to fill the time available. Formulation of this obvious truth has won its author international acclaim and Parkinson's Law is now firmly entrenched in the English idiom. In this article, prepared especially for the South Dakota Law Review, bureaucracy's famed satirist applies his law to new areas, and reaches some disquieting conclu- sions concerning the true utility of various educational, scientific, and leisure activities. But this is not all. Pro- fessor Parkinson herein also undertakes to propound a second law, namely, that expenditure rises to meet income, and to examine, in the light of this second law, the controversial subject of taxation. He concludes with a rather revolutionary formula for reducing taxes and increasing administrative efficiency. I. PARKINSON'S FIRST LAW On the 19th of September, 1955, I finished an article which I had written while on vacation and posted it to the Editor of the Econo- mist. My covering letter read thus: Dear Sir, I submit herewith for your consideration an article en- titled Parkinson's Law, explaining how and at what speed the staff of any government department will increase by a law of accretion, unaffected by the amount of work which the department is supposed to transact. Yours faithfully, I did not know the Editor of the Economist, nor had I ever con- tributed to its highly respected columns. I addressed that covering * Based upon views expressed during the fifth annual presentation of the Charles Hall Dillon Lectures in Law and Government at the State University of South Dakota on October 30, 1959. ** M.A. Emmanuel College, Cambridge University; Ph.D. Kings College, London University; Raffles Professor of History, University of Malaya; Visiting Professor, Uni- versity of Illinois, 1959-1960. Author, Parkinson's Law, The Pursuit of Progress (1958); The Law and the Profits (1960).

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