 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
City of Enid7/5/2005
nment; no law can be passed in regard to a single street or ward in a city. The stop thus put to discrimination is beneficial as far as it goes, but it is not a complete stop, nor is discrimination the only danger to be avoided.
Charles C. Binney, Restrictions upon Local and Special Legislation in State Constitutions, 12 (1894), (emphasis added).
A legislature retained the power to determine circumstances that justified different or discriminatory treatment in laws that applied to some but not all cities in a state.
In the case of municipal corporations and rural local government also, the prohibition of special legislation works fairly well in the great majority of instances. Most cities, and probably all boroughs, villages, towns, counties, etc., can, for the purpose of their government, be grouped into a few classes, the members of which do not differ greatly from each other in size or other distinctive characteristics, so that a law for one class can reasonably be expected to work equally well for every member of the class; while, if it works ill, it is almost certain to do so in every case, and that for some cause which lies deeper than the mere fact that the law is general. The number of places necessarily affected by a law prevents, moreover, the enactment of laws designed in the interest of one place only. If such a law be against the interest of the other communities affected by it, they will oppose its passage, and thus the unfair grant of special privileges will be prevented.
In every State, however, there are cities which differ so widely from others that they must be classed by themselves, and a law for a class which though theoretically capable of enlargement actually contains but one or two members, is practically a special or local law, even if it be legally general. In such cases the prohibition is to a great degree inoperative, and as regards all strictly municipal matters which concern the whole city, special legislation goes on as before, and with the same results. The legislature cannot indeed order the paving of a particular street or in other ways legislate directly for special parts of the city, but it can create and abolish particular offices, direct how the clerks in any special city department shall be appointed, and in many ways regulate the affairs of a single city just as if no prohibition of special legislation existed.
Binney, Restrictions upon Local and Special Legislation in State Constitutions, at 14-15, (emphasis added).
The construction placed by other state courts on similar state constitutions, as well as the Territorial Court's construction of the federal statute, were known by the framers of our Constitution. Chickasha Cotton Oil Co. v. Lamb and Tyner, 1911 OK 68 11, 114 P. 333, 336. One of our early opinions was Territory of Oklahoma v. School District No. 83, 1901 OK 22, 64 P. 241. In Chickasha we distinguished between special and local laws and performed a separate analysis for both. We defined a "local law" and concluded that the provision at issue was a local law. We then concluded that the provision was also a special law.
The difference between "local" and "special" became minimized after the enactment of the Constitution when the Court distinguished general laws from local or special laws. One reason for this is that a "local law" is a type of "special law." School Dist. No. 85 v. School Dist. No. 71, 1928 OK 689, 26, 276 P. 186 ("Special laws are not all local, but all local laws are special."). This concept is also observed in Art. 5 §§ 32 and 59. A "local law" referred to in § 32 is a type of "special law" prohibited by § 59, but that local law may pass constitutional
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Oklahoma Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|