REVENUE FINANCING OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES

Authors

E. H. Foley Jr., Legal Division, Public Works Administration

Abstract

Courts have been slow to take judicial notice of the growing needs of local communities. Legislatures have restrained municipal corporations from engaging in business enterprises upon the assumption that the object was mere hope of gain, that the investment of municipal funds in such enterprises was simply a speculation, or that the effect was to divert municipal corporations from their legitimate ends and to poach upon the preserves of private enterprise. Novel municipal undertakings have been feared as an entering wedge of state socialism or governmental paternalism. Even when the instrumentality of private adventure was disposed to leave a need unsatisfied, and even when a municipal enterprise was for the benefit of the general public and was not undertaken primarily for profit, novelty in the functions of local government usually met with a judicial veto.

Recommended Citation

E. H. Foley Jr., REVENUE FINANCING OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES, 35 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (1936).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol35/iss1/2