Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1993
Abstract
Twenty-five years ago, in Avery v Midland County, the United States Supreme Court extended the one person/one vote requirement to local governments. Avery and subsequent decisions applying federal constitutional standards to local elections suggested a change in the legal status of local governments and appeared to signal a shift in the balance of federalism. Traditionally, local governments have been conceptualized as instrumentalities of the states. Questions of local government organization and structure were reserved to the plenary discretion of the states with little federal constitutional oversight. In contrast, Avery assumed that local governments are locally representative bodies, not simply arms of the states. Avery and its progeny, therefore, imposed new restrictions on state provisions for the organization of local governments. Commentators have expressed concern that rigid application of federal constitutional principles could deprive states and localities of the flexibility essential to make local governments responsive to the tremendous diversity of local conditions.
Disciplines
Election Law | Law | State and Local Government Law
Recommended Citation
Richard Briffault,
Who Rules at Home: One Person/One Vote and Local Governments,
60
U. Chi. L. Rev.
339
(1993).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/932