Toward A Federal Legal Theory of the City

Abstract

This paper offers a federal legal theory of the city. Debates about federalism give rise to questions of economic efficiency, regulatory coordination, and democratic legitimacy that arise in circumstances where political authority is divided, typically along overlapping geographic lines. Furthermore, particularly in the legal academy, federalism debates tend to raise questions of institutional design, including some that involve the configurations of legislative or administrative bodies. This paper will offer an account of cities that addresses these kinds of questions. Part I will present debates in the local government law literature between localists and regionalists and show that they sound in the language of federalism. The underlying theoretical claims of the positions in those debates will be subject to close examination. Part II will argue for a particular kind of institution that accommodates and is responsive to the range of concerns expressed in the localist-regionalist debate. Part II will further argue that British Columbia’s regional district system resolves many of the contested issues in the localist-regionalist debate and that that system can be conceived of in federalism terms.