Law Commons^™

Principles Of Home Rule For The Twenty-First Century, Richard Briffault, Nestor M. Davidson, Paul A. Diller, Sarah Fox, Laurie Reynolds, Erin A. Scharff, Richard Schragger, Rick Su

Faculty Scholarship

The National League of Cities’ “Principles of Home Rule for the Twenty-First Century” updates the American Municipal Association’s 1953 “Model Constitutional Provisions for Municipal Home Rule.” The AMA approach was widely adopted, but those provisions are now over 65 years old and intervening social, demographic, economic, and political changes necessitates a new approach to the legal structure of state-local relations. The NLC’s approach is organized around four basic principles, which are cashed-out in a model constitutional home rule provision, with commentary. The first principle states that a state’s law of home rule should provide local governments the full capacity to …

The Challenge Of The New Preemption, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade has witnessed the emergence and rapid spread of a new and aggressive form of state preemption of local government action across a wide range of subjects, including among others firearms, workplace conditions, sanctuary cities, antidiscrimination laws, and environmental and public health regulation. Particularly striking are punitive measures that do not just preempt local measures but also hit local officials or governments with criminal or civil fines, state aid cutoffs, or liability for damages, as well as broad preemption proposals that would virtually end local initiative over a wide range of subjects. The rise of the new preemption …

On Family Law Localism: A Comment On Sean Hannon Williams's Sex In The City, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

In his Article “Sex in the City,” Professor Sean Hannon Williams addresses the problems of enormous trial court discretion and concomitant unpredictable and inconsistent decisions found in divorce cases by proposing that local governments adopt nonbinding “rules of thumb” that would guide judges in exercising that discretion with respect to issues such as child custody, property division, and income support. He contends that this proposal would fit within the existing legal framework of state-local relations and would advance the goals of both family law reform and local empowerment with respect to family issues. Specifically, he urges that local legislative action …

Home Rule For The Twenty-First Century, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

At this point, four years into the new century, most readers must be tired of the invocation of the "twenty-first century" in law review articles. Yet, "the twenty-first century" in the title of this article is significant. The home rule idea first entered American law in the nineteenth century, an era with different forms of urban political, social, and economic organization, and a different role for local government. As the nature of urban development and the role of local government changes, home rule must change with it.

Home rule is a complex topic. Home rule takes many legal forms and …

Local Government And The New York State Constitution, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

On November 4, 1997, the question "Shall there be a convention to revise the [state] constitution and amend the same?" will be submitted to the New York state electorate pursuant to the provision in the state constitution requiring that every twenty years the voters be given the opportunity to call for a constitutional convention. A longstanding constitutional concern in New York is local government and the relations between local governments and the State. With an eye to the upcoming vote on whether to hold a constitutional convention, this paper examines the place of local government and state-local relations in the …