Introduction.

• Position: LEGISLATIVE NOTES

INTRODUCTION

In 1932, Justice Louis Brandeis celebrated state governments as "laboratories of democracy." (1) Their size and independence, the Justice said, allowed policymakers to "try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." (2)

Recent political developments have given local governments a new opportunity to perform the "experiments" that Brandeis described. Over the past twenty years, the federal government has undergone what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called the "devolution revolution." (3) All three branches of the federal government have shifted a variety of powers--from oversight of social welfare programs to enforcement of civil rights law--back to the state and local level. Local leaders are increasingly responsible for developing their own legislative solutions to long-standing problems.

This new burden has spurred new and often creative approaches to issues unaddressed or unresolved by national politicians. And yet academic literature has devoted little attention to analyzing those pioneering local experiments. So, with Volume Nineteen, the Stanford Law & Policy Review begins a new venture: the Legislative Notes project. Our goal is to bring frontline reports from the "laboratories of democracy." Through concise, practical, and timely analyses of the country's most innovative local legislation, we intend to highlight creative solutions to critical problems and identify lessons learned from failed experiments. In time, we hope that this project will grow into a valuable resource for policymakers and academics alike.

In Autumn 2007, we issued a call for short student notes that examined recent policy innovations in state and local government. The call was met with enthusiasm by both authors and advisors and yielded the inaugural Notes published here. These terrific pieces, edited by Ben Joseloff, our inaugural editor and a former Congressional staffer, set the tone for what promises to be a venerable Stanford Law & Policy Review tradition.

In the opening Note, Brian Goldman details San Francisco's efforts to guarantee city-wide universal health care. The San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance is a ground-breaking policy shift from a common "pay or play" scheme to what Goldman calls a "pay-plus or play" plan for its unique combination of employer spending requirements and...