Reorienting Home Rule: Part 1–The Urban Disadvantage in National and State Lawmaking

The article focuses on democratic legitimacy of the federal and state lawmaking processes from the perspective of large and densely populated urban areas with the issues such as gerrymandering and the state constitutional home rule doctrine with urban disadvantage

Why Do Cities Innovate in Public Health? Implications of Scale and Structure

Big cities have frequently enacted public health regulations—especially with respect to tobacco use and obesity—that go beyond the state and federal regulatory floors. That cities innovate in public health at all is remarkable. They have less to gain financially from more stringent regulation than higher levels of government, which shoulder more of the burden of Medicare and Medicaid. Cities are supposed to fear mobile capital flight; if they regulate, businesses will leave. Moreover, because innovation is costly and likely to be copied by others when successful, a free-rider problem might inhibit local policy innovation generally. Cities’ prolific regulation in the public health sphere in spite of countervailing predictions thus demands an explanation. This Article aims to offer one, focusing on what makes local lawmaking unique from lawmaking at the federal and state levels. This Article argues that cities’ smaller scale, concentrated political preferences, and streamlined lawmaking processes facilitate public health innovation. With respect to structure in particular, cities’ unicameral legislatures and lack of a supermajority requirement allow affirmative regulatory legislation to proceed more expeditiously. Cities thus stand in contrast to the currently dysfunctional federal government, in which vested interest groups can more easily block regulatory legislation they dislike. In highlighting what is different about the local lawmaking process, this Article aims to better inform the debate about the extent of local power, which plays out in doctrinal areas like home rule and preemption

Reorienting Home Rule: Part 2–Remedying the Urban Disadvantage Through Federalism and Localism

The article focuses on the impact of the urban disadvantage on federal preemption in Louisiana, and discusses remedying the urban disadvantage through federalism and localism; and use of constitutional home rule for helping urban disadvantage that exists in state legislatures

The Political Process of Preemption

Preemption, particularly of the state-city variety, has become a hot topic. State legislatures in many states over the last decade have preempted a wide swath of areas in which cities and counties were previously free to govern. In addition to the sweeping nature and frequency of preemption, the increasingly aggressive methods of enforcing preemption have drawn notice. The threat of fiscal penalties, removal of local officials from office, and even criminal sanctions constitute what one scholar has dubbed the phenomenon of “hyper preemption.