From
Thomas Stephens
Date: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 11:20 AM
Subject: Semi-Random Thoughts..
“Incorporated cities and boroughs have always, both in England and in America, been self-governing communities
within such scope of jurisdiction as their charters vest in the corporate body. … Our constitution cannot be understood or carried out at all, except on the theory of local
self-government; and the intention to preserve it is quite apparent. In every case where provision is made by the constitution itself for local officers, they are selected by local action. All
counties, towns, and school districts are made to depend upon it. All elections are required to be in local divisions where electors reside. Cities are represented in the board of supervisors
... It is impossible to read that document [the Michigan State Constitution of 1850] without finding the plainest evidence that every part of the state is to be under
some system of localized authority emanating from the people. This is no mere political theory, but appears in the constitution as the foundation of all our polity.”
Since that time, amendments and revisions of the Michigan State Constitution, including Art. VII, § 22,supra, have
strengthened the power and authority of locally chartered units of government against arbitrary state legislative interference (in the absence of the state using its power to eliminate the local
unit government entirely, and thereby becoming responsible for governing lawfully as the government of that community).
"As there is nothing requiring the person appointed to be citizens of the locality, they can and may be sent in from abroad, and
it is not a remote possibility that self-government of towns may make way for a government by such influences as can force themselves upon the legislative notice at Lansing. As the municipal
corporation will have no control, except such as the state may voluntarily give it, as regards the taxes to be levied, the buildings to be constructed, the pavements to be laid, and the
conveniences to be supplied, it is inevitable that parties, from mere personal considerations, shall seek the offices, and endeavor to secure from the appointing body, whose members in general
are not to feel the burden, a compensation such as would not be awarded by the people...
As the legislature could not be compelled to regard the local political sentiment in their choice, and would, in fact, be most likely
to interfere when that sentiment was adverse to their own, the government of cities might be taken to itself by the party for the time being in power, and municipal governments might easily and
naturally become the spoils of party...
All these things are not only possible, but entirely within the range of probability, if the positions assumed on behalf of
the state are tenable. It may be said that these would be mere abuses of power, such as may creep in under any system of constitutional freedom; but what is constitutional freedom? Has the
administration of equal laws by magistrates freely chosen no necessary place in it? Constitutional freedom certainly does not consist in exemption from governmental interference in the
citizen's private affairs; in his being unmolested in his family, suffered to buy, sell and enjoy property, and generally to seek happiness in his own way. All this might be permitted by the most
arbitrary ruler, even though he allowed his subjects no degree of political liberty. The government of an oligarchy may be as just, as regardful of private rights, and as little
burdensome as any other; but if it were sought to establish such a government over our cities by law it would hardly do to call upon a protesting people to show where in the constitution the
power to establish it was prohibited; it would be necessary, on the other hand, to point out to them where and by what unguarded words the power had been conferred. Some things are too plain to
be written.
If this charter of state government which we call a constitution, were all there was of constitutional command; if the
usages, the customs, the maxims, that have sprung from the habits of life, modes of thought, methods of trying facts by the neighborhood, and mutual responsibility in neighborhood interests, the
precepts which have come from the revolutions which overturned tyrannies, the sentiments of manly independence and self-control which impelled our ancestors to summon the local community to
redress local evils, instead of relying upon king or legislature at a distance to do so--if a recognition of all these were to be stricken from the body of our constitutional law, a lifeless
skeleton might remain, but the living spirit, that which gives it force and attraction, which makes it valuable and draws to it the affections of the people, that which distinguishes it from the
numberless constitutions, so called, which in Europe have been set up and thrown down within the last hundred years, many of which, in their expressions, have seemed equally fair and to possess
equal promise with ours, and have only been wanting in the support and vitality which these alone can give--this living and breathing spirit, which supplies the interpretation of the words
of the written charter, would be utterly lost and gone....
The state may mould local institutions according to its views of policy or expediency; but local government is matter of absolute
right; and the state cannot take it away. It would be the boldest mockery to speak of a city as possessing municipal liberty where the state not only shaped its government, but at discretion sent
in its own agents to administer it; or to call that system one of constitutional freedom under which it should be equally admissible to allow the people full control in their local affairs, or no
control at all.
- Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cooley inHurlbut, supra, in 1871
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