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Full-Text Articles in Law
Metropolitanization And Land-Use Parochialism--Toward A Judicial Attitude, Michael H. Feiler
Metropolitanization And Land-Use Parochialism--Toward A Judicial Attitude, Michael H. Feiler
Michigan Law Review
The purpose of this Article is to explore those situations in which courts have given meaning to the Euclid caveat in operation, and, from those instances, to attempt to evolve a judicial approach to the problems posed by the conflict between purely local interests on the one hand and more comprehensive regional interests on the other. Four basic premises are herein indulged: (1) that strictly local zoning is unsatisfactory; (2) that new and innovative legislation will not be readily forthcoming; (3) that the burden of mediating these conflict situations will continue to fall upon the judiciary; and (4) that present …
New York City Consumer Protection Law Of 1969, Thomas G. Morgan
New York City Consumer Protection Law Of 1969, Thomas G. Morgan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In recent years there has been growing concern over the lack of legal protection afforded the American consumer. Comprehensive consumer protection legislation has been introduced at all levels of government, and several significant proposals have been enacted into law. One such enactment at the municipal level is the New York City Consumer Protection Law of 1969, which establishes a framework for a broad ban against unfair trade practices and vests the city's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs with extensive powers of enforcement. In this note, the New York City ordinance will be analyzed and evaluated against the general background of existing …
Decentralization Of Metropolitan Government: Reform In Indianapolis, Charles T. Richardson
Decentralization Of Metropolitan Government: Reform In Indianapolis, Charles T. Richardson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This note will deal first with the reasons for centralization of local governments and how certain cities, especially Indianapolis, have achieved that goal. The issue of involving smaller communities in the solution to urban problems will then be discussed, first in the context of certain objections to the Indianapolis consolidation, then in the context of the achievement record of community development corporations, and finally with relation to MINIGOV itself. Part IV will consider specific sections of the MINIGOV bill dealing with citizen participation in land use planning and development, and Part V will more broadly compare the Indianapolis scheme to …
Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.
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
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 …
Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead
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
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, …
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 …
Constraints On Local Governments In Public Employee Bargaining, Charles M. Rehmus
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.
Strikes And Impasse Resolution In Public Employment, Arvid Anderson
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 …
Commonwealth Of Puerto Rico V. Rosso: Land Banking And The Expanded Concept Of Public Use, David L. Callies
Commonwealth Of Puerto Rico V. Rosso: Land Banking And The Expanded Concept Of Public Use, David L. Callies
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
As the supply of vacant land on which to expand dwindles, the economic, social and cultural blight attendant upon the rapid but relatively unplanned growth of metropolitan areas increasingly becomes a subject of grave concern throughout the world. The two most common traditional approaches to land use problems are now proving inadequate, given the nature of urban sprawl. The first is zoning, basically an exercise of the police power whereby a governmental body restricts the use of land by appropriate regulation without compensating the owner. The restriction must be for the purpose of promoting the health, morals, safety or welfare …
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Law reform can be achieved through precedent-setting case law and through legislation. Each is a time-consuming activity with its own stumbling blocks. To establish law through the case method, one must have a fact situation directly on point with the inequity which one is trying to remedy. In many situations the client must be willing to follow through a long process of trial and appeal, instead of settling for a more immediate but incomplete resolution of his problem. The costs of litigation may become an insurmountable problem. Another difficulty with the test case as a vehicle for law reform is …
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Brief Response, Joseph L. Sax
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Brief Response, Joseph L. Sax
Michigan Law Review
Professors Blum and Dunham begin their comment by accusing us of having a new idea. We plead guilty. Our purpose was to demonstrate that accepted principles in analogous areas of law would support a slumlordism action, not to argue that tort law as presently applied would do so. Indeed, our basic intent was to underscore the myopia of existing tort law perspectives.
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Dissenting View, Walter J. Blum, Allison Dunham
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Dissenting View, Walter J. Blum, Allison Dunham
Michigan Law Review
The persistence of substandard housing in urban centers stands as a challenge to law. There is a pressing need to re-examine whether prevailing legal doctrines are adequate for dealing with the problem and to suggest new doctrines where the old are found wanting. To their great credit, Joseph L. Sax and Fred J. Hiestand in their article "Slumlordism as a Tort" face up to these tasks boldly and vigorously. They conclude that, under existing conditions, it is imprudent to rely on public authorities to enforce housing codes and it is unlikely that legislatures will place sufficient enforcement powers in private …
Public Control Of Land Subdivision In Michigan: Description And Critique, Roger A. Cunningham
Public Control Of Land Subdivision In Michigan: Description And Critique, Roger A. Cunningham
Michigan Law Review
Michigan seems to be unique in having three separate subdivision control statutes. The Plat Act of 1929, like the Subdivision Control Act of 1967 which will soon replace it, is largely mandatory, prescribing standards and procedures required in all cases of land subdivision (as defined in the statute), whether the municipality in which the land is located has a planning commission or not. The Municipal Planning Act, on the other hand, is simply an enabling act, permissive both with respect to establishment of a planning commission and with respect to the exercise by that commission, once established, of the power …
Rent Regulations Under The Police Power, Alan W. Boyd
Rent Regulations Under The Police Power, Alan W. Boyd
Michigan Law Review
Conditions resulting from the widespread housing shortage caused by the cessation of building during the war have given rise to legislation which must seem startling indeed to much of the legal talent surviving from a generation ago. The outstanding example is to be found in the New York laws which so far have succeeded admirably in eluding the constitutional pitfalls relied upon to nullify them. Three provisions have borne the brunt of the attack. The first prevents the recovery of an unreasonable rent in an action at law, and places the burden of showing reasonableness upon the landlord." Another suspends …