Government
Nov. 15, 2022
Reforming city government
As proposals are being advanced to again revise the Los Angeles City Charter and improve city government, there is much to be learned from the experience from almost 25 years ago and how the current Charter came to be.
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
Erwin's most recent book is "Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism." He is also the author of "Closing the Courthouse," (Yale University Press 2017).
The many scandals affecting the City Council are justifiably leading to calls for reforms, but the discussion surprisingly omits any mention of how the current structures came to be. They are the result of an intense two-year effort at reforming the Los Angeles City Charter between 1997 and 1999 that produced a document that was a compromise on virtually every issue. In fact, I recently spoke to a former Los Angeles City Council member who had never heard of this pro...
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