Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights
by Thom Hartmann

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Ordinances and Constitutional Amendments

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Excerpted from Thom Hartmann's book Unequal Protection:

Attorney Daniel Brannen drafted the following model ordinances for this book, and directions for its use. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, 2859 Scotland Road, Chambersburg, PA 17201, holds its copyright and they give permission to any local government or individuals to use or modify it as they see fit, but protect its republication in other books or publications.

In our correspondence, Brannen noted: "You asked how can a municipality overrule the Supreme Court. Municipalities are not going to be overruling the Supreme Court with this ordinance. Rather, they are going to be giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to correct a legally incorrect ruling (Santa Clara). That's the way constitutional jurisprudence develops. For a long time, the Supreme Court sanctioned the concept of separate but equal facilities. Eventually the Supreme Court overruled this concept, but it took local action to get a case before the Court to give it a chance to correct itself."

To use these ordinances, select the state you live in, choose the type of government (city, municipality, county, etc.) you're submitting this to, and then copy the language. You can do this off the web by clicking on the text to select it, control-C to copy it, and then pasting it into a word-processing document. Then have an attorney in your state check it to make sure it will work for your state and your purposes (these are models - we make no claims as to their accuracy or correctness, although we think they're all correct).

Then you use the petition or legislative process appropriate to your locality to get this ordinance up for a vote. Good luck!

All the ordinances and constitutional amendments are copyright 2002 by Daniel Brannen and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), who grant their use only for not-for-profit purposes.