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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 …
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 …
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.