In this article by Simon Davis-Cohen in Truth-Out, the Michigan state government actually cites Supreme Court cases that relied on Dillon’s rule, in its argument defending the Michigan Emergency Manager law that unconstitutionally swept various poor communities’ city councils into the dustbin.
Detroit’s hardship has garnered much attention: the privatization; the racism; the water shutoffs; the debt; the neglect; the “new form of local government.” As Maureen Taylor of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization makes clear, the profit being made off poverty in Detroit “is beyond horrible.” Michigan’s right-wing governor and state legislature take blame, and rightfully so. But it’s more than a particular regime that brought all these trials to Detroit and 10 other Michigan cities: Flint, Inkster, River Rouge, Hamtramck, Highland Park, Lincoln Park, Benton Harbor, Ecorse, Pontiac and Allen Park. A structure of law that blankets the entire nation is involved.
Detroit and the other city governments have been effectively dissolved. Voting for mayor or city council yields no power. The elected governments are symbolic – toothless. In Detroit, all governing power resides in one man – Kevyn Orr – the state-appointed “emergency manager.” He performs all functions of local government – unilaterally.
And though egregious, Detroit’s dismemberment is but a symptom of a legal doctrine – an idea – that has worked to trivialize the American municipality, for well over a century.
The legal doctrine was devised in the 1880s by one of the United States’ first corporate lawyers, a legal wizard, John F. Dillon. After sitting on the Iowa State Supreme Court and the Eighth Circuit, Dillon went on to teach at Columbia Law while serving as general solicitor of Union Central Railroad Company. He later left academia to practice law, representing the likes of Union Pacific, Western Union and the famous robber baron Jay Gould. MORE…