Law Commons^™

In the past year, local governments have made a foray into the hotly debated arena of immigration law and policy by adopting laws to address illegal immigration in their respective jurisdictions. Courts have struck down many of these laws on the grounds that they are preempted pursuant to a traditional view of federalism. From a localist perspective, however, this is troubling for two reasons. First, traditional federalism fails to recognize local control and autonomy by insisting on treating local governments as mere arms of the state. Instead of the traditional two-tier, federal-state federalism model, localists favor a more modern view …