Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Courses

• Constitutional Law

  This course provides an overview of American Constitutional law. It focuses on issues of equality and individual liberty, federalism, judicial review, separation of powers, and the allocation of authority between the federal and state governments. It places questions of doctrine and theory in an historic, social and political context.

• Land Use Regulation

  This course will survey and evaluate the various rules restricting the use of land and the various local ordinances, state statutes, and constitutional doctrines that limit such legal restrictions. In particular, we will examine the system of zoning (using New York City’s zoning resolution as a case study), the administrative process that controls land-use regulation, incentive zoning and the planned unit development process, eminent domain , and various land-use financing devices including exactions, impact fees, and special assessments. We will also spend some time on the constitutional doctrines and statutes controlling regulatory takings and exclusionary zoning. Finally, we will survey some economic and political theories that attempt to explain why and how cities and suburbs control land, for whose benefit and at whose cost.

• Law of NYC Seminar

  This course will examine current law and policy controversies in New York City and require students to propose solutions to a range of problems facing the City in light of the City‘s “constitution” — i.e., its decision-making structures. That “constitution” includes New York City's home rule powers under Article IX of the NY Constitution; preemption of local laws by state and federal law; the relative powers of the mayor, city council, and other elected officials; and the City’s revenue sources such as property taxes. The policy problems will include issues ranging from plastic bag pollution to property tax reform. Students will be required to (a) write a policy or law brief on an assigned current legal or policy controversy affecting New York City’s governance and (b) defend their positions in oral arguments before the class during the term, during which they will be mooted by leading practitioners of local government law in New York City, including lawyers currently serving in the New York City Law Department. Specific topics for such oral arguments will depend on availability of mooters and the controversies that arise in the City as the term progresses but, by way of illustration, such topics in the past have included the power of City Council to confer the franchise on non-citizens, the power of the Planning Commission to mandate inclusionary zoning to promote low-income housing, and the preemption of the City’s campaign finance limits by state law. These mootings and the policy and legal briefs on which they are based will constitute part of the course readings as well as the basis for class discussion.

• Legislation and the Regulatory State

  This course examines two general topics of public law – how statutes ought to be interpreted and how the administrative agencies that implement those statutes ought to be controlled. We will investigate these general topics by examining the constitutional and political framework through which Congress enacts statutes, the judicial doctrines that govern the interpretation of these statutes, the doctrines and statutes governing agency adjudication and rule-making, and the various scholarly theories about how best to control the interest groups that shape statutory language and implementation.

• Local Government Law

  This course examines the legal and political relationships that govern the provision of goods and services by state and local governments. We will explore the relationships between localities and states, between localities and their residents, and between localities and their neighbors. In each case, we will consider legal principles that address: 1) what services should a local government provide; 2) which residents should receive those services; 3) who should pay for the services provided; 4) who should decide the answers to the above questions? We will emphasize and critique the constitutional and statutory responses that various states and localities have given to these issues. Among the specific areas covered will be the sources of local government power, incorporation and annexation, home rule, racial and economic implications of urban policy, state pre-emption of local ordinances, conflicts between cities and suburbs, property taxation, user fees, and municipal finance.

• NYC Law Department Externship Seminar

  “Representing New York City” provides an overview of work as an attorney in the New York City Law Department (NYCLD). With over 700 attorneys working on everything from giant real estate transactions involving city-owned land to juvenile deliquency hearings before Family Court, the NYCLD, under the supervision of the NYC Corporation Counsel, has the legal responsibility of representing in state and federal court the largest and most complex city in the United States. Students enrolled in Representing New York City will work in one of the NYCLD’s divisions, where they will perform research and writing under the supervision of the assistant corporation counsels to whom they have been assigned. Externship students will also meet together weekly (Tuesdays, 6-8 PM) in seminar to discuss roughly ten general legal and policy topics related to the attorney’s role in representing an institution as complex as New York City. Some of these weekly seminar sessions will be devoted to exercises such as drafting legislation, negotiating over the terms of a settlement proposal, or explaining legal limits on agency authority to one of NYCLD’s client agencies. Each student will also spend the term preparing a proposal for law reform pertaining to their division, which could take the form of litigation, proposed legislation, or proposed executive rule-making, to present to the Corporation Counsel.

• Seminar on Federalism: Law, Policy and History

  How should power be divided between a central government and subcentral jurisdictions (states, provinces, lander, cantons, whatever they might be called) led by officials elected by, and responsive to, those jurisdictions’ residents? This is the central question common to all federal systems of government, ranging from the seventeenth century Holy Roman Empire to modern India. The question has provoked civil wars as well as peaceful secessions. It has also implicated the most basic human rights, ranging from the right of westerners to exclude slavery in antebellum America to the right of Nigerians from ethnic backgrounds different from their neighbors to travel in provinces where they are not “indigenes.” Legal theorists and social scientists have argued that getting the answer to this central question right could promote desirable value pluralism, economic efficiency, and democracy. This course will provide an overview of five fundamental sets of legal and policy issues springing from this central question of divided power including (1) secession, nullification, and subcentral jurisdictions' power more generally to resist the central government; (2) division of legislative competences between subcentral and central government over “local” and “national” topics; (3) judicial and non-judicial enforcement of the rules defining such divisions of power; (4) the protection of commerce and individual mobility between subcentral jurisdictions; and (5) subcentral governments’ implementation of national rules, through either or both contract with, or command from, the central government. We will examine these five issues by examining constitutional ground rules, political practices, and judicial decisions from the United States, Canada, India, Nigeria, Germany, and the European Union. In addition, we will read some recent economic and political science scholarship associated with each of the four issues, including work by Barry Weingast, Jonathan Rodden, Daniel Treisman, Jenna Bednar, and Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld. Specific issues include the debates over the national government’s power to regulate slavery in antebellum United States; the international controversy over secession of Quebec and Kosovo and the right of secession provided by constitutions like Ethiopia’s; the legal and political fights over European nations’ barring aliens who are also European citizens from getting aid to study or work; the power of states to “nullify” the Fugitive Slave Act; and the comparative powers of the modern U.S. and Canadian governments to regulate the environmental quality of intrastate waters.