Also known as: municipal laws · local law · municipal ordinance
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
2 senses
Ordinances and other enactments by a city, town, or similar local governmental entity that regulate conduct within its territorial limits.
Ordinances and other enactments by a city, town, or similar local governmental entity that regulate conduct within its territorial limits.
After a commercial lease ends, tenant Michelle Murphy remains in possession of the premises. Landlord Meridian Motors files an action in the city court seeking possession. The court applies the city's summary eviction procedures to restore the property to the landlord.
The internal legal system of a sovereign nation, as distinguished from international law that governs relations among nations.
Federal legislation directs state and city police departments to perform handgun purchaser background checks using local officers and resources. City officials in a municipal department refuse, asserting that the federal directive improperly commandeers local personnel.
Parties dispute ownership rights in a warehouse located in one state after a sale negotiated in another. The court selects the local law of the situs state because that jurisdiction maintains the most significant relationship to the land and the transaction.
The internal legal system of a sovereign nation, as distinguished from international law that governs relations among nations.
Each sense below has its own examples, sources, and questions.
Yes. Either the landlord or an incoming tenant may pursue the speedy judicial remedies supplied by controlling local law to recover possession from a tenant who remains after the lease terminates, unless the governing statutes provide otherwise.
A buyer and seller form a contract for equipment in one state while the goods sit in another. The court weighs the parties' justified expectations formed under the domestic rules of the formation state when selecting the governing municipal law.
Litigants contest title to land situated abroad. The forum court applies its own municipal rules on pleadings and joinder while referring the substantive capacity question to the law of the situs state.
A dispute arises over interests in real property located in a foreign jurisdiction. The forum court consults the totality of the situs state's municipal law, including that state's choice-of-law rules, to replicate the outcome a local court would reach.
Municipal law comprises the domestic rules a nation applies to persons and property within its borders. International law instead governs relations between sovereign states. The distinction determines whether a court applies local ordinances or treaty-based norms.
A court selects the local law of the state with the most significant relationship to the land and parties. For immovables the reference is to the full law of the situs, including its choice-of-law rules, to ensure the same result a court sitting there would reach.
Yes. The doctrine prohibits the federal government from ordering state or local officers to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Local law enforcement agencies therefore cannot be compelled to perform federal background checks or similar tasks.
Contacts located in two or more states that share the same local law on the issue are aggregated and treated as if situated in a single state. This aggregation simplifies the most-significant-relationship determination when the substantive rules coincide.
…and the impossibility of discovering a satisfactory line of demarcation between the province of general law and that of local law developed a new well of uncertainties.[^maj-8] On the other hand, the mischievous results of the doctrine had become apparent. Diversity of citizenship jurisdiction was conferred in order…