Special legislation in the context of "Home rule"

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⭐ Core Definition: Special legislation

In the United States, special legislation is legislation that targets an individual or a small, identifiable group for treatment that does not apply to all the members of a given class. The expression "special legislation" is legal term of art. A statute is often called special legislation when it targets a named person, but the term can also be applied to legislation that singles out an association or corporation. Although a prototypical special law applies only to a single particular person or entity, legislation is often considered special when it applies to a small group of people or other entities.

Special legislation can be used to place burdens on or grant benefits to identifiable individuals. During the Confederation Period, bills of attainder, the most well-known type of special legislation, were enacted by state legislatures to punish individuals suspected, but neither charged nor convicted, of a crime. Special legislation was also used during that period to grant benefits to identifiable individuals, including monopoly rights and exemptions from generally applicable laws.

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👉 Special legislation in the context of Home rule

Home rule is the government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been decentralized to it by the central government. Home rule may govern in an autonomous administrative division; in contrast, though, there is no sovereignty separate from that of the parent state, and thus no separate chief military command nor separate foreign policy and diplomacy.

In the British Isles, it traditionally referred to self-government, devolution or independence of the countries of the United Kingdom—initially Ireland, and later Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In the United States and other countries organised as federations of states, the term usually refers to the process and mechanisms of self-government as exercised by municipalities, counties, or other units of local government at the level below that of a federal state (e.g., U.S. state, in which context see special legislation). It can also refer to the system under which the Faroe Islands and Greenland are associated with Denmark.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Home rule ← Home Rule
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
United States → Statute → Confederation Period → Bills of attainder → State legislature (United States) →