home rule, municipal definition of home rule, municipal in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

home rule, municipal, system adopted in many states of the United States by which a city is given the right to draft and amend its own charter charter, document granting certain rights, powers, or functions. It may be issued by the sovereign body of a state to a local governing body, university, or other corporation or by the constituted authority of a society or order to a local unit.
..... Click the link for more information. and to regulate purely local matters without interference from the state legislature. The rapid growth of urban centers in the latter part of the 19th cent. brought new and complex problems; the state legislatures, which had controlled most city government city government, political administration of urban areas.

The English tradition of incorporating urban units (cities, boroughs, villages, towns) and allowing them freedom in most local matters is general in the United States (see city ; local government ).
..... Click the link for more information. , found themselves incapable of handling the fast-growing cities. In 1875, Missouri adopted the first municipal home rule clause in its constitution; other states have followed its lead. The form of the rule varies greatly from state to state. There are two principal types of municipal home rule: constitutional home rule, by which cities are given the right by the state constitution to form their own charters; and legislative home rule, by which local autonomy is granted through an act of the state legislature. Local and general concerns cannot, of course, be strictly delimited, and there are frequent legal and political contests concerning jurisdiction. The growing importance of the suburbs and the relative decline of cities have led to the concept of metropolitan government as an intermediary between city and state government.

Bibliography

See J. D. McGoldrick, Law and Practice of Municipal Home Rule, 1916–1930 (1933, repr. 1972); R. P. Bolan, Fundamentals of Home Rule (1960); bibliography by N. C. Burg (1973).