Municipal Power to Tax -- Its Constitutional Limitations

Throughout the United States a great many municipalities have found that in recent years their revenue from taxes has not kept up with their expenses. While inflation spiralled municipal costs, while demands for municipal services increased terrifically during the last few decades, and while financial burdens, such as the three-platoon fire department, were readily imposed upon the municipal corporations by the state legislatures, the tax bases available to municipalities were too often insufficient to meet the expanding local requirements. Older taxes, such as the tax upon real property, have proved more and more inadequate as residents moved beyond city limits, not only thereby depriving the municipalities of property taxes but often leaving behind only greatly depreciated properties. At the same time municipal corporations found many sources of tax revenue being preempted by the federal and state governments. Lastly, the municipal corporations have quite generally been underrepresented in state legislatures with an unhappy effect upon applications for new powers to tax. Basically, then, municipal corporations are inhibited in raising revenue by taxes first of all by lack of power and, secondly, by the force and effect of federal and state constitutional limitations. This paper is devoted to a study of the principles governing municipal power to tax and its constitutional limitations

Bedi: Freedom of Expression and Security: A Comparative Study of the Function of the Supreme Courts of the United States and India

A Review of Freedom of Expression and Security: A Comparative Study of the Function of the Supreme Courts of the United States and India by A.S. Bed

Book Review

Any book that educates the American community to an under-standing of and an appreciation for the Bill of Rights serves a laudable end. And conceivably any author is entitled to define his own terms. However, Mr. Weinberger indicates his displeasure with the traditional meaning of the term, Bill of Rights, as embracing the first ten amendments and sets out to include within his comparable term what he calls Additional Amendments Dealing with Personal Liberty \u27 thus adding the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments, as well as Provisions in the Original Constitution Dealing with Personal Liberty which he specifies as the article I ban upon bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, and the same article\u27s provision that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not ordinarily be suspended; the article III requirement of jury trials and its definition of Treason; the article IV privileges and immunities clause; and the article VI ban upon religious test oaths

Dennis v. United States -- Precedent, Principle or Perversion?

Every socio-political group must determine when its survival necessitates proscription of subversive activity. Although some scholars feel no limitation upon speech is therefor justified, most students of the problem are agreed that when national security is at stake somewhere there must be imposed some limitations upon freedom of expression. The Blackstonian notion that, although there could be no prior restraints, anything could be punished after utterance is unworthy. Prior restraints of some kind, such as a prohibition upon publishing in time of war the sailing dates of troopships, are permissible under any rational analysis while, on the other hand, if anything can be punished after utterance severe punishments will as effectively deter communication as any prior restraint. The truth is that no objective standard can contribute much to the delimitation of liberty

Bedi: Freedom of Expression and Security: A Comparative Study of the Function of the Supreme Courts of the United States and India

A Review of Freedom of Expression and Security: A Comparative Study of the Function of the Supreme Courts of the United States and India by A.S. Bed