Exercise 2: A City Ordinance Under Dillon's Rule vs. Home Rule — Possible Solution
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This exercise is really about applying the chapter's own two named
doctrines to a concrete situation - a state that has simply never
addressed a topic at all - rather than a case where the state has
actively forbidden something.

UNDER DILLON'S RULE
Per Judge Dillon's own real 1868 ruling, a municipal corporation
"derive[s] powers and rights wholly from the legislature." That means
the city's authority to act is limited to whatever the state has
explicitly granted it, plus whatever is necessarily implied by an
explicit grant. If the state legislature has never explicitly
addressed this particular topic at all, a Dillon's Rule city has no
clear authority to act on it - silence from the state doesn't count as
permission; it counts as an absence of any granted power. The city
would likely need to seek explicit state authorization (through new
state legislation, or a specific grant) before it could pass a valid
ordinance on the subject at all, or risk having the ordinance
successfully challenged in court as beyond its own legal authority.

UNDER HOME RULE
Per Justice Cooley's own real opposing doctrine, "local government is
a matter of absolute right; and the state cannot take it away." A home
rule city starts from the opposite assumption: it has broad, general
authority to govern its own local affairs without needing to point to
a specific, explicit state grant for every individual action. Because
the state legislature has never addressed this topic - meaning it
hasn't explicitly forbidden it either - a home rule city can generally
go ahead and pass the ordinance on its own authority, without first
needing state permission, so long as it isn't contradicting an
existing state law.

THE PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE
The real difference comes down to which default rule fills the gap
when the state has simply said nothing on a topic. A Dillon's Rule
city treats state silence as "no power granted, so no valid action" -
the city likely cannot act (or acts at real legal risk) until the
state explicitly says it can. A home rule city treats state silence as
"nothing forbidding this, so the city's own general authority covers
it" - the ordinance can generally proceed unless and until the state
legislature explicitly overrides it.

ANSWER: Under Dillon's Rule, the city likely cannot validly pass the
ordinance, because the doctrine requires an explicit state grant of
authority and treats state silence on a topic as an absence of power,
not permission - the city would need to seek specific state
authorization first. Under home rule, the city can generally go ahead
and pass the ordinance on its own general authority, since home rule
doesn't require pointing to a specific explicit grant, and state
silence on the topic doesn't stand in the way unless the state has
actually forbidden it.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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It applies each doctrine's own real, quoted logic (Dillon's "derive
wholly from the legislature" vs. Cooley's "the state cannot take it
away") specifically to the "state has simply never addressed this"
scenario, rather than a scenario where the state has actively banned
something, which is the correct read of what the exercise is actually
testing.