John Forrest Dillon

John Forrest Dillon (December 25, 1831 – May 6, 1914) was an American attorney in Iowa and New York, a justice of the Iowa Supreme Court and a United States circuit judge of the United States Circuit Court for the Eighth Circuit. He authored a highly influential treatise on the power of states over municipal governments.

Education and career

Born on December 25, 1831, in Northampton, (then part of Montgomery County, now part of Fulton County), New York, Dillon received a Doctor of Medicine in 1850 from the University of Iowa.

Later career Following his resignation from the federal bench, Dillon was a professor of law for Columbia University from 1879 to 1882. He died on May 6, 1914, in New York City. By contrast, the Cooley Doctrine, or the doctrine of home rule, expressed the theory of an inherent right to local self-determination. In a concurring opinion, Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley in 1871 stated, "local government is a matter of absolute right; and the state cannot take it away".

In Municipal Corporations (1872), Dillon contended that in contrast to the powers of states, which are unlimited but for express restrictions under the state or federal constitution, municipalities only have the powers that are expressly granted to them by the state, any power necessarily implied by an express power, and those powers essential to a municipality's existence. This formulation of the scope of municipal power came to be known as "Dillon's Rule".

The Supreme Court of the United States cited Municipal Corporations and fully adopted Dillon's emphasis on state power over municipalities in Hunter v. Pittsburgh, which upheld the power of Pennsylvania to consolidate the city of Allegheny into the city of Pittsburgh, despite the objections of a majority of Allegheny's residents. The Court's ruling that states could alter or abolish at will the charters of municipal corporations without infringing upon contract rights relied upon Dillon's distinction between public, municipal corporations and private ones. However, the Court did not prevent states from passing legislation or amending their constitutions to explicitly allow home rule. This constitutional allowance was reiterated in Trenton v. New Jersey, where the Supreme Court held that "In the absence of state constitutional provisions safeguarding it to them, municipalities have no inherent right of self-government which is beyond the legislative control of the state, but are merely departments of the state, with powers and privileges such as the state has seen fit to grant, held and exercised subject to its sovereign will".