The Limits of Localism

In Chicago v. Morales, the Supreme Court struck down Chicago\u27s Gang Congregation Ordinance, which barred criminal street gang members from loitering with one another or with other persons in any public place. The stated purpose of the ordinance was to wrest control of public areas from gang members who, simply by their presence, intimidated the public and established control over identifiable areas of the city, namely certain inner-city streets, sidewalks, and corners. The ordinance required that police officers determine whether at least one of two or more persons present in a public place were members of a criminal street gang and whether these persons were loitering. Loitering was defined as remain[ing] in any one place with no apparent purpose. According to the Supreme Court, the [Chicago] police issued over 89,000 dispersal orders and arrested over 42,000 people for violating the ordinance in a three-year period. The ordinance\u27s defeat was, in some ways, preordained. Over twenty-five years earlier the Supreme Court had struck down similarly broad local vagrancy and loitering statutes as void for vagueness in a series of opinions culminating in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville. These decisions, combined with the earlier constitutionalization of street law by the Warren Court, dramatically curtailed police authority to move along undesirables and informally discipline disorderly conduct.8 Indeed, the ordinance at issue in Morales appears to be a straightforward case of police overreaching, an uncontroversial case for Court intervention. At least according to proponents, however, the Gang Congregation Ordinance had significant support in the minority, highcrime, inner-city neighborhoods in which it was implemented. Advocates argue that these communities should have substantial autonomy to adopt norms that are responsive to local conditions. State and federal courts should defer to such norms, even when they deviate from constitutional guarantees, because local residents are in a better position to balance liberty and order in light of local circumstances

El preocupante giro de la prevalencia estatal: el ataque a las ciudades progresistas en Estados Unidos y sus posibilidades de defensa

Este artículo analiza las características de la autonomía local de las entidades locales estadounidenses y cómo las iniciativas de política progresista de estos municipios se están viendo coartadas a través del mecanismo de la prevalencia de las normas de cada estado, que frenan consciente y activamente la aplicación o avance de dichas políticas. Para ello, se estudian tanto la prevalencia estatal como mecanismo constitucional de desplazamiento de normas locales, como las nuevas tendencias que pretenden no solo neutralizar la actuación local de progreso, sino castigar a aquellos municipios y cargos públicos locales cuya acción político-normativa sea más progresista que la del estado al que pertenece. Ante esta situación, se exploran los problemas jurídico-constitucionales que estos mecanismos plantean —tanto a nivel estatal como federal— así como las distintas vías mediante las que los municipios pueden defenderse de la prevalencia de las normas estatales y del afán punitivo de esta