SLoG

The great urban economist Edward Glaeser came on the Digging a Hole podcast to talk about his new book, urban policy during and after the pandemic, infrastructure and much more

American state and local government has gotten its share of criticism in recent years, including on this blog. Instead of being “laboratories of democracies,” as Justice Brandeis once famously called them, the states – especially red states – are often seen as agents of “vote suppression,” promoters of dysfunctional policies, and oppressors of women and minorities. In addition, the nationalization of state politics has led to a variety of flaws in state and local elections, i

This post is based on a presentation for the 2021 North Carolina Law Review Symposium "Home Rule in the 21st Century" It has been a roller coaster ride for local budgets. 2020 promised another year of record growth until the pandemic created what seemed like a fiscal cliff for many cities. As the year continued, it became clear that many states would weather the pandemic recession far better than initially feared, but local leaders continued to highlight their cities’ budge

This post is based on a presentation for the 2021 North Carolina Law Review Symposium "Home Rule in the 21st Century" The NLC HR21C proposal is astoundingly comprehensive, covering more aspects of home rule than its predecessors. As constitutional language alone, if adopted in toto, it would likely be the wordiest constitutional home rule provision on home rule among the states. But the proposal need not be an all-or-nothing proposition. Rather, states can and should consi

Daniel Farbman is Assistant Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. This post is based on his presentation for the 2021 North Carolina Law Review Symposium "Home Rule in the 21st Century" Right now, Georgia is the poster-child for what ails our localism. On the one hand, the new “election integrity” law in Georgia gives the state legislature the power to take over election administration from any county it chooses to. This provision is clearly aimed at large urban coun

In 2020, the National League of Cities (NLC) published the Principles of Home Rule for the Twenty-First Century , a groundbreaking new vision of local-government legal authority to match the increasingly central role that cities play in our contemporary system of governance. (I was on the drafting team, along with Richard Briffault, Nestor Davidson, Paul Diller, Sarah Fox, Laurie Reynolds, Erin Scharff, and Rick Su.) The Principles includes a model home rule constitutional

Bob Hagemann is a partner at Poyner Spruill LLC in Raleigh, NC and served in the Charlotte City Attorney's Office for twenty-four years, the last seven as City Attorney. This post is based on his presentation for the 2021 North Carolina Law Review Symposium "Home Rule in the 21st Century" In 2016, the Charlotte City Council considered joining most other major cities in this country in prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation based on sexual orientation, ge

The North Carolina Law Review Annual Symposium this year is on "Home Rule in the Twenty-First Century" We are delighted that the Symposium is previewing with us here, and also that our first "Field Dispatch" come to us from the former Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hagemann, on developments since the North Carolina "Bathroom Bill" HB2 was revised, making room for home rule approaches to gender discrimination issues. Here is the link to attend the conference by Zoom, and here is

Yes, you heard right, a vaccination was mandated in Texas, as a condition for entry by Texas girls into public middle school, at age 11 or 12,. With thanks to Miriam Seifter, who reminded me of this in a footnote in her terrific work on Gubernatorial Administration. In 2007, then Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, issued RP-65 making Texas the first state in the nation to mandate a vaccination against the Human Papillomavirus Virus (HPV) Perry’s Executive Order was

In his recent interview with Ezra Klein, Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City Eric Adams said: "We must all share the affordable housing crisis. And every community board should be given a number and told that you must come up with where you’re going to place your affordable housing in your community board. And if you don’t do it, then our planning board would come up with the plan to put affordable housing in the community. One solution must solve a multitude

Litigation proceeds apace with regard to Red state governor challenges to local mandates and private vaccine passports. Efforts by governors DeSantis (Florida) and Abbott (Texas) have been rebuffed by trial courts only to be vindicated by courts of appeal -- and, in the case of Texas, by the state supreme court. These orders are all emergency orders, and so we have not yet had a full-scale trial on these issues. And, if we assume that these mandates will not become moot, e

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1971 Virginia Constitution, which replaced the Jim Crow constitution of 1902. Last week, the Virginia Journal of Law and Politics hosted the first of two symposium sessions commemorating that anniversary, with papers to be published this academic year. My contribution (co-authored with Alex Retzloff), excerpted here, considers why the 1971 revision did not include a home rule provision. Hint: it may have something to do with the Com

For the last 100 years or so, many state constitutions have included provisions that create alternatives to representative and political party mediated democracy. The Progressive Era was marked by proposals to reform the structure of all levels of government, and state constitutions and local charters bear its marks today. The initiative and referendum, non-partisan elections, and recall provisions were understood as methods to use constitutional law and institutional desig

On September 8, 2021, the commonwealth of Virginia finally removed its sixty-one-foot-tall statue of Robert E. Le e. For more than 130 years, it towered over Richmond's Monument Avenue, until a combination of activism and political mobilization laid the groundwork for its removal. The story of the monument—from its origins to its demise—is also a legal story that should be of interest to state and local government scholars. The construction and destruction of the monument ra

In health policy, education, and other areas with a major federal presence, the viability of state reforms depends not just on federal law but on the choices of federal agencies, including federal agency decisions whether to grant or deny “waivers” that often last five or more years and change regulatory requirements or financial flows from the default set by statute. The desirability of waiver legislation has been debated (see, e.g., Professor Barron’s and Professor Rakoff’

The last month in the United States has offered a preview of life in a changing climate. The hurricane-induced flooding and power outages , wildfire destruction , and drought leading to the Colorado River’s first compact call are examples of the kinds of impacts that rising global temperatures will bring. The physical realities of climate change, including rising sea levels, decreasing access to water, heightened fire risk, hotter surface temperatures, and more, are only exp