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Local Government "Home Rule": A Place To Stop?, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

In November 1977, the Supreme Court of Georgia rendered a decision in City of Atlanta v. Myers which invalidated a municipal ordinance requiring that police officers and firefighters be residents of the municipality. The public media, in its discussion of the decision, primariily pointed out the residency requirement, the policy behind it, and its advantages and disadvantages to the cause of good government--all important matters. As frequently happens, however, even more crucial considerations in the case may have gone unheralded. From the legal perspective, that is, the importance of the decision and its implications may considerably transcend the factual context …

Extraterritorial Power In Georgia Municipal Law, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

The image of municipal power carries with it the accompanying concept of limitations on that power. One of the seemingly most natural of such limitations is that pertaining to territory. If a municipality is an incorporated entity, composed of precisely described physical boundaries, then its operational existence would normally be presumed to take place within those boundaries. The municipality's power to function outside its limits would thus appear not only unnecessary but foreign to the corporate conception. The problem with such neatness, of course, is its unworldliness. The truism is that neither man nor municipality is an island and that …

Selected Oddities In Georgia Municipal Law, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

Generally speaking, practitioners, jurists, professors, legislators, and students desire certainty in the law. For those interested in the law of municipal corporations in Georgia, however, that search for certainty is frequently frustrating, if not impossible. In his Article, Professor Sentell points to a number of Georgia constitutional and statutory rules which, when read with the interpretations of these provisions by the Georgia courts, generate uncertainty and confusion for one confronted with a question in municipal corporation law. The discussion begins with a look at the definitional uncertainty of what is a municipal corporation under Georgia law, turns next to an …

Discretion In Georgia Local Government Law, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

The initial question in evaluating the ability of a municipal corporation to control the affairs of its citizens is the existence of an allocation of power from the state sovereign. Once such power is found, Georgia courts traditionally view any activity within the scope of that power as a privilege of citizenship in a municipal corporation, controlled at the generally unrestricted discretion of the local government. But when and how do such privileges become rights? With an overview of the typical positions taken by Georgia courts on the power of local governments to control the affairs of their citizens, Professor …

Unconstitutionality In Georgia: Problems Of Nothing, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

Professor Sentell's Article examines the apparently well-established principle in Georgia that an unconstitutional statute is an absolute nullity. Against the backdrop of City of Atlanta v. Gower, Professor Sentell first focuses on the developmen of-the-void-from-inception doctrine and then reviews its application in Georgia. Finally, he concludes that this principle has had a substantial impact upon constitutional and legislative law in this state.

Federalizing Through The Franchise: The Supreme Court And Local Government, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

Decisionmaking at the local government level has been significantly affected by both national legislation and federal court decisions seeking to protect the right to vote. Indeed, Professor Sentell feels that the Supreme Court, through decisions invalidating restrictions on the franchise, has involved itself to an unparalleled degree in heretofore purely local affairs. In examining these decisions, the author queries if legitimate voting regulations may be now imposed by local governments. In so doing he focuses upon the Court's equal protection analysis of extraordinary majority vote requirements and elections restricted to certain segments of the electorate and upon the expansive judicial …

Municipal Annexation In Georgia: Nay-Sayers Beward (Plantation Pipe Line Co. V. City Of Bremen), R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

In the Fall 1967 issue of the Georgia Law Review, there appeared a somewhat ambitious effort to survey the law of municipal annexation in Georgia. That rather stuffy treatment at least served to demonstrate the existence of a history on the subject dating from the beginning of time in this State. It also purported to make one or two daring thrusts at formulating principles then apparently settled and at identifying legal points around which further evolution might be anticipated.

Some apparently believed that these thrusts were more negative than daring and that they reflected an approach which was basically …

Avery V. Midland County: Reapportionment And Local Government Revisited, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

Earlier in the pages of this Review the judicial application of the "one-man-one-vote" standard to local government is discussed in detail. As noted, the United States Supreme Court did not completely evolve this standard for state legislatures until June, 1964. Since that time, the state courts and the lower federal courts have been inundated with litigation raising the question of the basic applicability of the standard to local governments in this country, as well as a host of accompanying inquiries. This litigation and the courts' reactions to it were extensively traced. At the close of its term, however, the Court …