Law Commons^™

Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will demonstrate that the inconsistency is, to a large extent, more apparent than real and results from the application of two different conceptions of the purpose of the program to the same facts. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that Detroit's Building (housing) Code has failed in its attempt to force rehabilitation of residential structures through Code enforcement. Although it can be made to work more efficiently, the Code will never serve as an effective solution to the housing problem.

New York City School Decentralization, Barry D. Hovis

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The 1969 New York Education Act grew out of a movement demanding decentralization of the New York City school system. The ultimate goals of this movement were to: (1) encourage community awareness and participation in the development of educational policy, and (2) create sufficient flexibility in the school system to enable administrators to resolve the diverse needs of the varying communities within the city. Support for the plan arose out of more than a decade of dissatisfaction with the centralized system by educators, school administrators, and parents. Supporters of decentralization had pointed in particular to the failure of the centralized …

New York Minimum Wage Act For Migrant Workers, Karen E. Kuntz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The abject state in which most migrant workers in this country exist has recently become a matter of national concern. The increasing stridency of the migrants, personified by César Chavez in California, has resulted in recognition of the need for legislative assistance to rescue them from their plight. The migrant worker is unable to help himself, being burdened by a low annual income and an education level of only eight and a half years in school. In New York, the migrant's situation is aggravated by the powerful position of the crew leader or "farm labor contractor," who often determines workers' …

Michigan Compulsory Arbitration Act For Essential Services, William J. Rainey

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

When Public Act 312 became effective on October 1, 1969, Michigan joined Rhode Island and Pennsylvania in permitting compulsory arbitration of unresolved labor disputes involving municipal police and firemen. Wyoming similarly provides for compulsory arbitration in fire department disputes. Passage of the Act was prompted by a desire to avoid the dire consequences of strikes or work stoppages by firefighters and policemen, and to provide a method by which the bargaining power of public service unions could be maintained in the absence of the strike privilege. Since Michigan had barred strikes by public employees in 1947, the unions felt that …

Collective Bargaining For Public Employees And The Prevention Of Strikes In The Public Sector, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, a number of states have enacted legislation providing collective bargaining rights for public employees. Almost invariably these statutes have reaffirmed the traditional prohibition against strikes by government workers. But the strike-or the threat of a strike-has been a key economic weapon for employees in the private sector, and some observers contend that without that weapon the new collective bargaining rights for public employees are illusory.

Sturm & Whitaker: Implementing A New Constitution: The Michigan Experience, Walter D. De Vries

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Implementing a New Constitution: The Michigan Experience by Albert L. Sturm and Margaret Whitaker

Integrated Pretrial Attack On A Pleading: A Critical Evaluation Of Michigan's New Summary Judgement Rule, Carl S. Hawkins, Brett R. Dick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Modern procedural reforms reflect diminished confidence in the demurrer or "no cause" motion as a device to dispose of non-meritorious claims before trial. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, setting the pattern of reform for many states, abolished the demurrer. Although a preliminary attack upon the legal sufficiency of the complaint is still permitted by a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule 12 (b) (6), the challenged pleading may be amended as a matter of course, to minimize the risk that a good claim might be lost because it was poorly pleaded. The risk that sham amendments might then be …

Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The effect of most zoning devices which have been used in suburban and non-ghetto city planning in the past few decades has been to erect substantial economic barriers around entire cities. These devices include minimum lot size requirements, density zoning, frontage requirements, single family restrictions, and minimum living space requirements. While such zoning practices may not be exclusionary in purpose, exclusion of minority groups has been the result. Moreover, since most minorities are heavily concentrated in low income groups, economic segregation will bring about a high degree of racial and ethnic segregation. Indeed, it has been suggested that these economic …

Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Property Ownership Qualifications On The Right To Vote In Special Municipal Elections--Cipriano V. City Of Houma, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, a resident of Houma, Louisiana, who owned no real property, brought a class action seeking to prevent the city from issuing utility revenue bonds approved by a vote of the property taxpayers at a special election. He argued that the Louisiana statute restricting the right to vote in such elections to property owners was unconstitutional. Plaintiff relied on Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, in which the Supreme Court declared that Virginia's required payment of poll taxes for voting in general elections was a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. Harper, he claimed, …

State And Local Advisory Reports On Public Employment Labor Legislation: A Comparative Analysis, Russell A. Smith

Michigan Law Review

The reports surveyed in this Article will be designated by reference to the state or other governmental unit with which each is associated. The reports are, in chronological order, the Connecticut Report of February 1965, the Minnesota Report of March 1965, the Rhode Island Report of February 1966, the New York ("Taylor Committee") Report of March 1966, the Michigan Report of February 1967, the Illinois Report of March 1967, the New Jersey Report of January 1968, the Pennsylvania Report of June 1968, and the Los Angeles County Report of July 1968. The "findings" made by the National Governors' Conference Task …

The Coming Revolution In Public School Management, Donald H. Wollett

Michigan Law Review

Dr. James Conant has commented on ·what he views as "concurrent educational revolutions"-changes in methods of instruction, in curriculum emphasis, and in public school financing-which portend radical revision in the methods of determining educational policy. However, thus far neither Dr. Conant nor any other observer of similar stature has addressed himself seriously to a fourth educational revolution-in-the-making: the direct involvement of teachers, through structured collective negotiations, in the management of public elementary and secondary school systems. This Article will focus on that coming revolution.

Strikes And Impasse Resolution In Public Employment, Arvid Anderson

Michigan Law Review

Experience indicates that in most instances the right to strike is not an essential part of the public employment collective bargaining process.18 Thus, the crucial issue is not really whether strikes should be permitted or prohibited in the public sector, but whether the collective bargaining process itself can be made so effective absent the right to strike that the need for work stoppages will be obviated. It is my conclusion that certain proven impasse resolution procedures--mediation, fact-finding, and in some cases, even arbitration--can be substituted for the strike weapon in public employment without substantial loss in the effectiveness of collective …

Constraints On Local Governments In Public Employee Bargaining, Charles M. Rehmus

Michigan Law Review

It is to the basic financial and administrative constraints upon the powers of local governing units that this Article is primarily directed. The examples used are taken largely from Michigan experience and Michigan law. The same limitations upon the financial and administrative powers of local government, however, exist in almost all other states. The Michigan experience with public administration and public employee bargaining should provide both a warning and a guide to other states as they cope with the so-called public employee revolution.

The Evolution Of A Collective Bargaining Relationship In Public Education: New York City's Changing Seven-Year History, Ida Klaus

Michigan Law Review

The bargaining relationship between the New York City Board of Education and its teachers had its roots in the social forces of the mid-fifties and its formal origins in the events of the early sixties. The relationship came about without benefit of law or executive policy. No law permitting public employees to bargain collectively was in effect anywhere in those years, and Mayor Wagner's 1958 Executive Order-the culmination of three years of study and public inquiry-did not apply to teachers. Instead, the impetus came directly from the persistent and increasingly powerful drive of the teachers themselves. They demanded a substantial …

Housing Codes, Building Demolition, And Just Compensation: A Rationale For The Exercise Of Public Powers Over Slum Housing, Daniel R. Mandelker

Michigan Law Review

In programs of housing improvement and slum clearance, public agencies must often make difficult choices between the exercise of public powers of land acquisition, which require the payment of compensation, and public powers of noncompensatory regulation, which require no payment of compensation. This Article focuses on three of these programs-building demolition, urban renewal, and housing code enforcement. Public agencies may demolish slum dwellings, one at a time, without compensation. Title to the cleared site is not affected and remains in the owner after the building has been demolished. Under statutory powers of urban renewal, local public agencies may designate entire …

The University Of Michigan: Its Legal Profile, William B. Cudlip

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Inspiration for the preparation of this volume came from reading two sections of Volume I of the four-volumes published in 1942 entitled, The University of Michigan-An Encyclopedic Survey. One section by E. Blythe Stason, Dean Emeritus of the University's Law School, is captioned "The Constitutional Status of the University of Michigan." The other section captioned "The Organization, Powers and Personnel of the Board of Regents" was prepared by the Dean and the late Wilfred B. Shaw, long connected with the University in important administrative capacities and intimately acquainted with its history.

The material here presented duplicates in part that …

Reapportionment--Legislative Bodies--Significant Deviation From Standard Of Substantial Population Equality Of State Legislative Districts Is Permissible To Provide Representatives For Two Island Counties--Vigneault V. Secretary Of The Commonwealth, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Since Baker v. Carr, when the Supreme Court overruled a long line of earlier decisions and concluded that the relationship of the equal protection clause to a state's power to create geographical districts for legislative representation was a justiciable issue, state apportionment plans have come under increasing judicial scrutiny. In Gray v. Sanders, the Court held invalid a Georgia primary election plan which favored voters from rural areas. Although Gray dealt with the dilution of individual voting rights rather than legislative reapportionment, it is important as the first enunciation of the now-famous "one man-one vote" test. Specifically, the …