The Yale Law Journal is thrilled to announce that Volume 133 will publish a Special Issue on State and Local Governance. We invite submissions covering the broad range of challenges and opportunities arising at the state and local level.  

State and local governance impacts every individual in the United States. There is wide variation in how this governance works, including in community zoning, school administration, state and local budgeting, and utilities regulation. In recent years, as rights and legal frameworks are in flux at the federal level, citizens, scholars, and policymakers alike have turned their attention to the state and local level. Many pressing policy issues and key legal battles continue to arise within states. Courts have considered whether state law can preempt local law on matters related to gun control and abortion; taken up questions on state-level capital gains taxes; and reviewed state-constitution-based challenges to global issues like climate change, to name a few. Further, just this past term in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court considered the bounds of state legislatures’ authority on federal matters, including elections. As Justice Brandeis noted in 1932, the great promise of states is that they serve as ‘laboratories’ of democracy. In dedicating a Special Issue to this topic, the Journal seeks to explore the innovation and challenges that arise within these laboratories.