ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the successes of home rule and its limitations to further enhance local self-government and state-local relations in the American system. The principal strength of home rule has been its ability to guarantee the residents of a particular locality substantial freedom to shape the structures of the local governments serving them. In recent years, the old demand for separation of functions by plane of government—the traditional basis for home rule—has surfaced once again. After intermixture of governmental functions and actors in the United States, the idea has reemerged among those concerned with such matters that an effective federal system and, in particular, effective state and local governments depend upon a realignment of functions and actors, effectively a redivision of responsibilities by governmental plane. Any discussion of realignment of functions and actors today must also seek to restore a concern with philosophy in order to regenerate good theory and doctrine and, ultimately, appropriate strategy and tactics.
