Document Type

Article

Publication Title

North Carolina Law Review

Volume

100

Publication Date

2022

Keywords

constitution, cities, state level

Abstract

This Article explains and defends the National League of Cities’ Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century, which the authors participated in drafting. The Principles project both articulates a vision of state-local relations appropriate to an urban age and, as with previous efforts stretching back to the Progressive Era, includes a model constitutional home rule article designed to serve as the foundation for state-level constitutional law reform. This Article explains the origins of the Principles, outlines the major components of its model constitutional provision, and defends the model against a set of criticisms common to this and past home-rule reform efforts. Necessitated by the increasingly hostile relationship between cities and their states, the Principles would reset the state-local relationship to better align local legal authority with the actual role that local governments play in contemporary governance. Currently, cities do not have sufficient authority to address the basic problems of urban governance, and the global pandemic has illustrated the widening gap between cities and their states over even the most basic public health and safety issues. Cities are seeking to address these and other constituent concerns but are regularly stymied by state law that is often aggressively deployed to punish local officials and limit their democratic responsiveness. A reformed home rule is an essential aspect of the states’ “internal federalism” and is crucial to addressing the challenges of twenty-first century governance.

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