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- Info
Our localism: Part I - The structure of local government law
| Author: |
Briffault, R. |
| Date: |
1990 |
| Periodical: |
Columbia Law Review |
| Abstract: |
The most emphatic recent presentation of the claim that local governments lack legal power is Gerald Frug's The City as a Legal Concept. Professor Frug's assertion that the law of state-local relations renders cities powerless is not unique, however; the claim is widely reflected in the literature. According to Professor Frug, the limited nature of local power derives from, first, the principles of nineteenth-century legal theory that established cities as decidedly inferior political institutions and, second, the failure of state constitutional reforms, most notably home rule, to change that. Although this critique captures some of the black-letter principles of local government law, it ignores much of the formal legal power local governments possess as well as all of their legally significant informal authority. |
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