SOURCE: "The Pragmatic Politics of Mr. H. J. Laski," in The American Political Science Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, May, 1924, pp. 251-75.

In the following essay, Elliott evaluates theories of the state and government in Laski's early writings.

In all the varied current of contemporary political theory which seems to have set against the conception of unitary sovereignty as the basis of the structure of the state, the work of Mr. H. J. Laski stands out sufficiently to command general attention. Perhaps this is as much because of the arresting fashion in which Mr. Laski has challenged the traditional doctrines of political theory as it is from the positive content of his own theories. He has seized upon the ideas centering about group rights which Drs. Figgis and Maitland have forced so brilliantly upon modern attention, and has made great play with them in developing Mr. Ernest Barker's idea...