Who Has the Power to Do This?

by bam

A method course for reading government authority. Given any government action, a zoning change, an annexation, a school-district line, a police stop, a tax, a permit denied, you will learn to find four things from the public record: the BODY that acted, the ENABLING AUTHORITY it claimed, the DOCUMENT that grants that power (a constitution, a charter, a statute, an ordinance, or a treaty), and WHO CAN OVERTURN IT. It is the general case of which the route series is fourteen worked examples: find the instrument, then find its source. Along the way it teaches the fact most adults were never taught, that in the United States cities are creatures of the state (Dillon's Rule, the Cooley Doctrine, home rule, and preemption), the vertical stack of authority from the nation down to the special districts almost nobody votes for, and the idea that tribal nations are not a rung on that ladder at all but a separate sovereign whose authority predates the United States. This course teaches how to READ authority. It is not legal advice.