Charlotte Crane--"The Historical Origins of the Patterns of Taxpayer Standing."
Charlotte Crane
Northwestern Law School
Abstract
This article considers the historical source of the patterns of taxpayer standing. Standing for the municipal taxpayer was originally premised upon the idea that municipalities could raise taxes only for specific purposes, and thus that the taxes themselves would be invalid if the purposes for which they were raised were beyond the power of the local government. State courts seem to have been willing to come to the aid of local taxpayers to shield them from their tax obligations when municipalities sought to impose taxes for other purposes-and thus to enforce the limits the legislatures may have set upon the power of the municipalities. In some states, such procedures evolved into a standard mechanism for judicial review of municipal actions, sometimes even endorsed by state legislatures. Perhaps ironically, this evolution meant increasing judicial review of the legislative authority under which municipal actions, especially related to aid provided to the railroads through the issuance of bonds, were taken. Allowing taxpayer standing in such circumstances provided the state courts with a chance to interfere with such actions before such interference would defeat the expectations of the bondholders. The taxing powers of the state governments have never been so limited, and therefore nineteenth century state courts had less concrete means for acting upon taxpayers to challenge state projects.
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