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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Legal Case For Equity In Local Climate Action Planning, Amy E. Turner
The Legal Case For Equity In Local Climate Action Planning, Amy E. Turner
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
Over the last half decade, local climate action plans have regularly come to incorporate considerations of racial and socioeconomic equity, recognizing the ways in which low-income communities and communities of color experience earlier and worse consequences from global warming, and these communities are also at risk of being harmed by policies meant to address climate change. Until now, however, the discourse on equity in climate action planning has largely pertained to policy; it acknowledges the disproportionate harm that certain communities experience as a result of climate change and policies to address climate change, and suggests policy tools that can address …
Article Ix: The Promise And Limits Of Home Rule, Richard Briffault
Article Ix: The Promise And Limits Of Home Rule, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Article IX of New York State’s constitution establishes the basic constitutional framework for addressing questions of local power, local government organization, and state-local and interlocal relations in the Empire State. Premised on a commitment to “[e]ffective local self-government,” the “home rule amendment” added to the state constitution in 1963 and unamended since then, has bolstered local control over local government organization and personnel and has provided a firmer foundation for local law-making in New York. But it has not succeeded in enabling New York’s local units – its counties, cities, towns and villages – to function as efficient, effective, locally …
State Hazard Mitigation Plans And Climate Change: Rating The States, Matthew Babcock
State Hazard Mitigation Plans And Climate Change: Rating The States, Matthew Babcock
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
Climate change is affecting and will continue to affect the frequency and severity of natural hazard events, a trend that is of increasing concern for emergency managers and hazard mitigation agencies across the United States. Proper response to these hazards will require preparation and planning. Unfortunately, states are not required to include analysis of climate change in their State Hazard Mitigation Plans, which leads to uneven treatment of the issue and missed opportunities for mitigation planning. This survey identifies those state plans that address climate change and climate-related issues in an accurate and helpful manner and those that do not. …
The Business Improvement District Comes Of Age, Richard Briffault
The Business Improvement District Comes Of Age, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
It is difficult to say precisely when the business improvement district (BID) was born. BIDs emerged out of legal structures and concepts that date back many decades, but the specific BID form is a relatively recent development. By some accounts, the first BID in the United States was the Downtown Development District of New Orleans, which was established in 1975. Few BIDs were created before 1980, and in most places the surge in BID formation did not really get going until around 1990 – the year that Philadelphia's Center City District was first established. Although new BIDs were created on …
Localism And Regionalism, Richard Briffault
Localism And Regionalism, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Localism and regionalism are normally seen as contrasting, indeed conflicting, conceptions of metropolitan area governance. Localism in this context refers to the view that the existing system of a large number of relatively small governments wielding power over such critical matters as local land use regulation, local taxation, and the financing of local public services ought to be preserved. The meaning of regionalism is less clearly defined and proposals for regional governance vary widely, but most advocates of regionalism would shift some authority from local governments, restrict local autonomy, or, at the very least, constrain the ability of local governments …
The Rise Of Sublocal Structures In Urban Governance, Richard Briffault
The Rise Of Sublocal Structures In Urban Governance, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
The dominant law and economics model of local government, based on the work of Charles M. Tiebout, assumes that decentralization of power to local governments promotes the efficient delivery of public goods and services. In his seminal article, A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures, Tiebout contended that the existence of a large number of local governments in any given area permits a "market solution" to the question of how to determine the level and mix of government services that people desire. The multiplicity of local governments in an area means that, as long as each locality is free to …
Local Government And The New York State Constitution, Richard Briffault
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 …
Who Rules At Home: One Person/One Vote And Local Governments, Richard Briffault
Who Rules At Home: One Person/One Vote And Local Governments, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Twenty-five years ago, in Avery v Midland County, the United States Supreme Court extended the one person/one vote requirement to local governments. Avery and subsequent decisions applying federal constitutional standards to local elections suggested a change in the legal status of local governments and appeared to signal a shift in the balance of federalism. Traditionally, local governments have been conceptualized as instrumentalities of the states. Questions of local government organization and structure were reserved to the plenary discretion of the states with little federal constitutional oversight. In contrast, Avery assumed that local governments are locally representative bodies, not simply …
The Role Of Local Control In School Finance Reform, Richard Briffault
The Role Of Local Control In School Finance Reform, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Local control is a puzzle, or rather, a series of related puzzles that has both structured and hindered the uncertain development of school finance reform. The first puzzle is really a paradox: courts and commentators generally assume that local control of education exists, that it is a basic organizational principle of American public elementary and secondary education, and a norm that must be taken into account when the existing school finance system is challenged. Yet for the law of local government generally, local control is the exception, not the rule. The ground rule of state-local relations is state control and …
Home Rule, Majority Rule, And Dillon's Rule, Richard Briffault
Home Rule, Majority Rule, And Dillon's Rule, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Clayton Gillette's In Partial Praise of Dillon's Rule, or, Can Public Choice Theory Justify Local Government Law? is an ambitious attempt to breathe new life into an old local government law chestnut through the analytical tools of modern political economy. Gillette asserts that because the Rule permits state judges to invalidate local legislation that results from "one-sided lobbying," Dillon's Rule increases the allocational efficiency of local decision making and reduces the deadweight losses attendant on special interest pursuit of rent-seeking ordinances. According to Gillette, Dillon's Rule checks the danger of special interest abuse of local politics by constraining local …
Our Localism: Part I – The Structure Of Local Government Law, Richard Briffault
Our Localism: Part I – The Structure Of Local Government Law, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Two themes dominate thejurisprudence of American local government law: the descriptive assertion that American localities lack power and the normative call for greater local autonomy. The positive claim of local legal powerlessness dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century and continues to be affirmed by treatises and commentators as a central element of state-local relations. The argument for local selfdetermination has a comparably historic pedigree and broad contemporary support. The scholarly proponents of greater local power – what I will call "localism" – make their case in terms of economic efficiency, education for public life and popular political …
Our Localism: Part Ii – Localism And Legal Theory, Richard Briffault
Our Localism: Part Ii – Localism And Legal Theory, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
A central theme in the literature of local government law is that local governments are powerless, incapable of initiating programs on behalf of their citizens or of resisting intrusions by the state. How can scholars make this claim when under state legislation and federal and state judicial decisions local autonomy plays a critical role in the law of school finance, land-use regulation and local government formation and preservation? As we have seen, a partial response turns on the varying assessments of the nature of power. But much of the answer also has to do with differing assumptions about the underlying …
State-Local Relations And Constitutional Law, Richard Briffault
State-Local Relations And Constitutional Law, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
A persistent theme in the literature on state-local relations has been the plenary power of state governments and the legal powerlessness of local governments. The "black letter" rules of state-local relations are that the state governments enjoy complete hegemony over their political subdivisions, that local governments are mere "creatures" of the states, with only those powers that the states delegate to them, and there is no such thing as an "inherent right" of local self-government.