86 
Despite the deference of the general court toward maintenance of 
the existing and historical number of municipalities within the Com- 
monwealth, no strong tradition of municipal autonomy existed at any 
time up to the passage of the home rule amendment in 1966. On the 
contrary, legislative control of even the most trifling detail of local 
government was the rule.’ 
The sources of that control may be found, first, in an early and 
repeated assertion by the courts of Massachusetts of the doctrine now 
known as Dillon’s Rule ™ and, second, in the right of free petition 
written into the Commonwealth’s constitution.“ The genera] attitude 
of the supreme judicial court toward towns and cities has remained 
constant into the 20th century. For example, in 1941 the court stated 
its attitude like this: 
Cities and towns are political subdivisions created for the convenient adminis- 
tration of government, and they possess only such powers as are conferred upon 
them in terms or by necessary implication of enabling acts. [Citations omitted. 
They are separate units, possessing only the authority thus entrusted, and acting 
as instrumentalities of local self-government.1!” 
Such a judicial interpretation of municipal dependency was rein- 
forced prior to 1966 by the actual practice of the general court in deal- 
ing with petitions made to it under article XIX of the constitution. 
Because the practice had been to receive and consider every petition, 
irrespective of its worth, the result was to encourage “‘the filing of 
requests for legislation on local affairs which are already within the 
competence of local legislative or administrative bodies, and which 
might better be resolved locally.’ 48 
Although the initiative of petitioning the legislature was that of 
the municipality, each time it exercised that right it demonstrated its 
debility, not its strength. The paralysis of effective local self-govern- 
ment and the delays inherent in legislative petition might have been 
tolerable 100 years ago, or perhaps even 50. But with the growth of 
large urban centers, with their many and urgent needs, the situation 
had grown too burdensome both for the urban municipalities and for 
the legislature itself. The former increasingly required the ability to 
assess and attack their own problems as they arose, without first 
having to go to a legislature, where a petition might be emasculated by 
log-rolling and dilatory tactics, or defeated outright because of hos- 
tility from rural legislators or a bar on special legislation.* The legis- 
lature itself, on the other hand, increasingly burdened with its own 
growing functions, no longer had the time necessary to consider prop- 
erly all the pertitions made to it. 
In a State, such as Massachusetts, where Dillon’s Rule was accepted 
doctrine, two problems had to be overcome both by municipalities and 
14 Municipal Home Rule, supra note 147, at 87, describes the gradually subcrdination of communities to 
the general court and concludes: “‘By the end of the 19th century there could be no violation of municipal 
home oe Dy gy legislature because there was no home rule left to ‘‘violate.’’ This is still the case (in 1965).”” 
116 Massachusetts Constitution, pt. 1, art. 19. The people have a right, in an orderly and peaceable manner, 
to assemble to consult upon the common good; give instruction to their representatives, and to request of the 
legislative body, by the way of addresses, petitions, or remonstrances, redress of the wrongs done them, and 
of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer. 
17 Burnham v. mayor and alderman of Beverly, 309 Mass. 308, 390, 35 N.E. 2d 242, 243 (1941). In 1964, only 2 
years before passage of the home rule amendment, the court cited the then art. 2 of the amendments to the 
State constitution as the basis for the “settled doctrine that the towns of the Commonwealth possess no ~ 
inherent right to self-government and for the proposition that ‘the power to create, change and destroy 
municipal corporations is in the “legislature” ’.”” Paddock v. Town of Brookline, 347 Mass. 230, 238, 197 N.E. 
2d 321, 326 (1964). 
118 Municipal Home Rule, supra note 147, at 94. 
1° 18 Ibid. 46; Sandalow, ‘The Limits of Municipal Power Under Home Rule: A Role for the Courts.’’ 
48 Minn. L. Rev. 648, 653-653 (1964). 
