Word: ombudsman
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...back as 1809, Sweden invented just such a "people's watchdog" and gave him a name, ombudsman, which means representative. Sweden's current ombudsman, Alfred Bexelius, 63, is a unique national mediator who serves the public by prodding laggard civil servants. He and his ten assistants already have counterparts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and New Zealand. Britain recently joined the movement by appointing a "parliamentary commission," and agitation for the appointment of ombudsmen has suddenly become popular all over the U.S. So far, however, the word does not even appear in U.S. dictionaries...
...first of three Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures, Walter Gellhorn, a member of the Law Faculty at Columbia University for 33 years, said that the U.S. needs a trained professional critic of the government. Such a critic might be similar to the Swedish ombudsman...
...ombudsman handles complaints of citizens abused by the federal bureaucracy. The office was invented by the Swedes in 1809. Today, the Swedish ombudsman and his staff handle 1300 complaints a year, a number which Gellhorn called remarkably small. The complaints are usually petty ones, but they can often lead to the complete overhauling of federal agencies...
...just because there is a need for reform, Gellhorn explained does not mean that the U.S. should definitely establish an office like the ombudsman. Some critical organ is necessary, he asserted, but this country has its own special problems...
Gellhorn will discuss these problems and the American alternative to the ombudsman in his second lecture at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Austin Hall...