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32 Rutgers L.J. 627 (2000-2001)
Localism and Lawmaking

handle is hein.journals/rutlj32 and id is 653 raw text is: LOCALISM AND LAWMAKING Daniel B. Rodriguez* I. INTRODUCTION The rallying cry among fashionable American lawyers and legal educators is globalism. Yet, many of the most vexing issues of social policy and legal institutions are found at the local level. Localism is worthy of equally vigorous attention among citizens, public officials, and legal scholars.1 But what do we mean when we discuss localism? From the perspective of local government law, localism embodies the idea that local governance ought to be protected to a greater or lesser degree from control by central governments, whether at the several or federal level. Localism, in this sense, is the intrastate analogue of federalism in American constitutional law. Localism can mean something more capacious than this, however. It can refer to the dynamics of state and local relations in the political, as well as the legal, sense. The puzzle of state and local relations in modern American government involves both legal and political considerations. The legal regime of local governance in the United States is constructed separately within the fifty states. Each state has a constitution that provides a more or less steady framework for the exercise of state and local power. While it is a commonplace to note the subservience of local governmental units, including cities and counties, to state authority given our theory of state constitutionalism,2 the reality of state and local relationships paints a more complicated picture. For one thing, there are legal rules in place which safeguard some degree of local prerogatives in the state political systems. For another, there exists a web of structures and institutions that ensure to a greater or lesser degree the protection of local interests from constant state control. The fundamental practical situation in state government is this: Local governments have unstable legal protections from state control, but * Dean and Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law. I thank the faculty at Seton Hall University School of Law for their helpful comments at a fall 2000 workshop. !. For a recent, ambitious effort to develop the case for augmented local power, and, indeed, for greater attention to the role of municipalities in public governance, see GERALD E. FRUG, CITY-MAKING: BUILDING COMMUNITIES WITHOUT BUILDING WALLS (1999). 2. See infra accompanying notes 52-86.

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