College of Law Professor to be Published in Yale Law Journal

September 8, 2023

MSU College of Law Assistant Professor Daniel Rosenbaum has gained recognition for his recent article entitled The Local Lawmaking Loophole. The article has been accepted for publication by the Yale Law Journal, which is internationally recognized as one of the most esteemed sources for legal scholarship.

“I was very surprised, but pleased,” he said. “Local government is a unique field; research on local institutions does not always resonate with readers. I’m hopeful that this publication brings more exposure to the importance of these institutions.”

Professor Rosenbaum’s article discusses how local governments contract with each other for a wide variety of purposes. By contracting with neighboring and overlapping governments, a local entity can draw upon funding and technical skills that it does not otherwise possess alone, operating in theory to the ultimate benefit of residents across its region.

He says that while these contractual agreements between local governments are important and can be valuable, they complicate traditional notions of democratic accountability. Professor Rosenbaum explains that traditional laws made by local legislative bodies follow a set of legislative rules; the processes for contract agreements tend to be more lenient.

“Because these contracts exist, we need to talk about how they compare to more traditional forms of local power,” he said. “The legislative route is much more transparent because laws must be posted beforehand, open meetings are held to discuss it, ratified ordinances are recorded for the public to view. Contracts do not necessarily have to be made public. Once approved by city councils, they could be altered by unelected members and are hard to find for the public to view.”

At MSU Law, Professor Rosenbaum teaches Local Government, Property, and the Local Government Policy Lab. His research explores how local institutions function, evolve, and interact with each other against a backdrop of opaque or inconsistent state oversight. Prior to joining MSU, he spent two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, where he taught Property, Estates and Trusts, and Local Government and was also appointed editor-in-chief of the Michigan Real Property Law Review.

He entered academia after serving as Executive Director of a public authority that managed distressed property in the Detroit region and advised local municipalities on issues of divestment, land ownership, and development. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Professor Rosenbaum earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis and his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School.