IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v41yi4p662-685.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dillon's Rule is From Mars, Home Rule is From Venus: Local Government Autonomy and the Rules of Statutory Construction

Author

Listed:
  • Jesse J. Richardson

Abstract

"Dillon's Rule" and "home rule" are terms often used to denote limited and expansive local government autonomy, respectively. In particular, much literature attributes Dillon's Rule with enormous influence over many and varied local government functions. This article explores the questions surrounding the true nature of Dillon's Rule and its influence, or lack thereof, on local government autonomy. The author explains that Dillon's Rule is a rule of statutory construction, while home rule lacks easy or uniform explanation. The article finds that home rule and Dillon's Rule are neither inapposite nor exclusive. The terms denote different concepts, each of which relates to local government autonomy, but in more subtle ways than often thought. Dillon's Rule exerts limited influence on local government autonomy. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesse J. Richardson, 0. "Dillon's Rule is From Mars, Home Rule is From Venus: Local Government Autonomy and the Rules of Statutory Construction," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 41(4), pages 662-685.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:41:y::i:4:p:662-685
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjr030
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:41:y::i:4:p:662-685. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.