Local law

“ It ought to keep open a perpetual communication with the localities—informing itself by their experience, and them by its own; giving advice freely when asked, volunteering it when seen to be required; compelling publicity and recordation of proceedings, and enforcing obedience to every general law which the Legislature has laid down on the subject of local management. That some such laws ought to be laid down few are likely to deny. ”

“ When formulating normative documents concerning the rights and obligations of individuals and organizations, the local people's governments at or above the county level shall, in accordance with their statutory limits of authority and procedures, conduct evaluations and argumentation, solicit public opinions, carry out legality reviews, make decisions through collective discussion, publish the normative documents and put them on the record. ”

“ Cort- landt, 68 Misc.2d 645, 653, 327 N.Y.S.2d 143, 153 (1971) (" [U] nder the home rule power to enact local laws, a town may enact a law which regulates the powers, duties, qualifications, [etc. ] of its officers and employees ") (emphasis added) ”

“ For the inhabitants of a particular parish or district to be permitted to carry out a general law which has been enacted by a whole people, according to the peculiar circumstances of their local condition, is a very different thing from giving to that district special privileges and laws, which may, and most p. ”

“ These States, at the adoption of the Federal Constitution, were organized communities, having distinct systems of municipal law, which, though derived from a common source and recognising in the main similar principles, yet in some respects had become unlike, and, on a particular subject, promised to be antagonistic.
Their systems provided protection for life, liberty, and property among their citizens, and for the determination of the condition and capacity of the persons domiciled within their limits. ”

“ The nation at large is interested in them in no other way than that in which it is interested in the private well-being of all its individual citizens. But among the duties classed as local, or performed by local functionaries, there are many which might with equal propriety be termed national, being the share belonging to the locality of some branch of the public administration in the efficiency of which the whole nation is alike interested: the jails, for instance, most of which in this country are under county management ”

“ Each state has the right to make political subdivisions of its territory for municipal purposes, and to regulate their local government. As respects the administration of justice, it may establish one system of courts for cities and another for rural districts, one system for one portion of its territory, and another system for another portion. ”

“ It has also been the immemorable policy in this country and in England to vest in municipal organizations certain local powers in respect to which they are peculiarly interested, and of the necessities of which they are much better informed than a general legislature possibly could be. ”

“ The whole life of the Commune is embraced in the statutes: the election and functions of political magistrates; public, civil, criminal, administrative, and commercial law. Public law is the subject most fully dealt with; while, for reasons already explained, civil law is left very incomplete. Nevertheless the statutes handle, with more or less detail, such matters as personal status, dowers, contracts, judicial procedure, succession, wills, rights arising in respect of contiguous lands or houses, and, above all, the family. ”

“ Regulation by the state has the advantage of making the provisions apply uniformly to all cities within its borders and is obtained by no more effort than is required to get an ordinance through the Council of a single municipality. On the other hand, the municipal ordinance has the advantage of being secured by residents of the community who are intelligently concerned in the local problem and who will therefore take an active interest in having its provisions enforced. ”

“ Where a local improvement territory is selected, and the burden is spread by the Legislature, or by a municipality to which the state has granted full legislative powers over the subject, the owners of property in the district have no constitutional right to be heard on the question of benefits. ”

“ It is their province to reward and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. ”

“ Where a local authority consider it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of their area—
(a) they may prosecute or defend or appear in any legal proceedings and, in the case of civil proceedings, may institute them in their own name, and (b) they may, in their own name, make representations in the interests of the inhabitants at any public inquiry held by or on behalf of any Minister or public body under any enactment. (2) In this section ‘local authority’ includes the Common Council. ”

“ In some localities the inhabitants have met together and voluntarily formed a municipal organization for the purposes of local government, adopting the form of a municipal constitution and charter, under which said officials have been appointed; and ordinances creating and regulating a police force, a fire department, a department of health, and making provision for the care of the insane and indigent poor and sick and for public schools, have been passed. ”

“ Local authorities are enabled to exercise similar powers for an enormous variety of municipal purposes, e.g. the housing of the working classes, the improvement of towns, and elementary and secondary education. Lastly, the promoters of public undertakings of a commercial character, such as railways and harbours, carry on their operations under statutes in which the provisions of the Lands Clauses Acts are incorporated. ”

“ Through local governments of local origin, clothed with appropriate powers of subordinate legislation and administration, these adaptations of general and indiscriminating laws are made by persons familiar with the localities;—by persons, therefore, who have greater aptitudes for this particular function, than are commonly possessed by persons of higher general qualifications, whose knowledge of the localities is less intimate and minute. ”

“ The commune shall perform all tasks of local government not reserved to other units of local government. Article 165 Units of local government shall possess legal personality. They shall have rights of ownership and other property rights. The self-governing nature of units of local government shall be protected by the courts. Article 166 Public duties aimed at satisfying the needs of a self- governing community shall be performed by units of local government as their direct responsibility. ”

“ That body may place one part of the state under one municipal organization, and another part of the state under another organization of an entirely different character. These are matters of a purely local nature, in respect to which, the federal constitution does not limit the power of the state. 'Whether territory shall be governed for local purposes by a county, a city, or a township organization, is one of the most usual and ordinary subjects of state legislation.' Kelly v. ”

“ Legal protection of local self-government Local authorities shall have the right of recourse to a judicial remedy in order to secure free exercise of their powers and respect for such principles of local self-government as are enshrined in the constitution or domestic legislation. ”

“ Again, a town is any collection of houses larger than a village; or any number of houses to which belongs a regular market, and which is not a city. (Johnson, Webster, Ogilvie.) The same authorities define a village as a small collection of houses in the country, less than a town. According to this distinction, the law, in giving power to 'any village, city, county, or township' to make donations and issue bonds to the railroad company, confers the power upon bodies of higher and lower degrees of municipal organization than towns, and leaves them out. ”

“ Congress can endow territorial governments and municipal corporations with legislative powers, as the possession of such powers for certain purposes of local administration is indispensable to their existence. ”

“ I admit that to mark the bounds for the jurisdiction of the Government of the United States within the Territory, and of its power in respect to persons and things within the municipal subdivisions it has created, is a work of delicacy and difficulty, and in a great measure is beyond the cognizance of the judiciary department of that Government. How much municipal power may be exercised by the people of the Territory before their admission to the Union, the courts of justice cannot decide. ”

“ Different kinds of local business require different areas of representation. The Unions of parishes have been fixed on as the most appropriate basis for the representative bodies which superintend the relief of indigence; while, for the proper regulation of highways, or prisons, or police, a large extent, like that of an average county, is not more than sufficient. ”

“ But usually the real significance and legal consequence of each term will depend upon its context and the nature of the interests it is invoked to distinguish.
Statutes may be called public because the rights conferred are of general application, while laws known as private affect few or selected individuals or localities. ”

“ The constitution of a municipality assumes that citizens will give, freely and without pay, such time as is wanted for the conduct of the municipal affairs. In local government the Settlement carries on a quiet work which is perhaps more effective than its classes and its lectures. ”

“ By including municipalities within the class of 'persons' subject to liability for violations of the Federal Constitution and laws, Congress-the supreme sovereign on matters of federal law-abolished whatever vestige of the State's sovereign immunity the municipality possessed. ”

“ During all this period the Nation remembered that it could be more tranquil and orderly if it functioned on the principle that the local communities should control their own peculiarly local affairs under their own local rules. ”

“ In thus rapidly sketching out the various ways in which a local village authority might encourage the growth and improvement of the place, it has been endeavoured to indicate, in a suggestive manner, the way in which such an authority might be established. It is not for one moment proposed that an application should be made to the Legislature for a special enactment enabling such councils to act with legal force. ”

“ Special legislation is prohibited when general laws are applicable, and special and local legislation is forbidden in any of twenty-three enumerated cases, among which are divorce, changing of an individual’s name or the name of a place, and the grant to a corporation of the right to build railways or to exercise any exclusive franchise or privilege. ”

“ Persons or corporations may establish and operate works for supplying the inhabitants with such services upon such conditions and under such regulations as the municipality may prescribe under its organic law, on condition that the municipal government shall have the right to regulate the charges thereof. ”

“ It may be conceded, as a general proposition, that there is a substantial distinction between the acts of a municipality as the agent of the state, for the preservation of peace and the protection of persons and property, and its acts as the agent of its citizens, for the care and improvement of the public property, and the adaptation of the city for the purposes of residence and business. ”

“ Corporations of a municipal character, such as towns, are usually organized in this country by special acts or pursuant to some general State law; and it is clear that their powers and duties differ in some important particulars from the towns which existed in the parent country before the Revolution, where they were created by special charters from the crown, and acquired many of their privileges by prescription, without any aid from Parliament. ”

“ Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights, as modelled by the municipal law. In this, and similar cases the legislature alone can, and indeed frequently does, interpose, and compel the individual to acquiesce. ”

“ In this section ‘supplementary provision’ means any such provision as could be made by an order under this Part of this Act by virtue of section 67 above or section 255 below.
Miscellaneous 70. No local authority shall have power to promote a Bill for forming or abolishing any local government area or for altering, or altering the status or electoral arrangements of, any local government area. ”

“ The custom has altered in kind; in lieu of cattle, sheep, and pigs turned out to pasture on the Commons, human beings have taken their place, and wear down the turf instead of eating it. I can see no reason why the law, or, if the courts are too slow to move, the Legislature, should not recognise this transfer and legalise this custom. Again, it is probable that Commons belonged originally much more to the inhabitants of a district than to the lord. ”

“ Article 135 Units of local self-government shall administer affairs of local jurisdiction by which the needs of citizens are directly fulfilled, and in particular affairs related to the organization of localities and housing, zoning and urban planning, public utilities, child care, social welfare, primary health services, education and primary schools, culture, physical education and sports, customer protection, protection and improvement of the environment, fire protection and civil defence. ”