Present at the Creation: A Personal Account of the APA Growing Smart^SM Project

Abstract

“… I am very dubious about a model act, with or without annotations. Unless a model act is really revolutionary in the sense that it readjusts our notions of political controls, I don't believe it solves any of the tough questions that our courts are being called upon to answer, because those questions are not ones of legislative delegation but are issues involving constitutional concepts. I am also dubious about selling model enabling legislation. I do not believe the ALI [American Law Institute] is aware that practical success in marketing other model acts such as the penal code or the model business corporation act is not analogous to the raucous field of land use planning, in which every legislator is an expert and every constituent has an ox. I would rather try to sell a majority of a supreme court of almost any state on an idea in land use planning than try to get a model bill on land use planning through the state legislature.”