What are the Origins and Characteristics of Municipal Government?

Human history seems to validate Aristotle’s ancient insight that man is, by nature, a social animal best suited for living in a community. Beginning about 6,000 years ago, at the dawn of the agricultural revolution, governed agricultural communities, emerged on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Whether for the purpose of
defense against hostile neighbors or as a means to gain the economic benefits of specialized labor and commerce (or both), the city emerged from its primitive, communal origins to become the defining institution of human civilization. It is difficult to think of civilization at all except in the context of “the city.” Improvements to the human condition made by the inhabitants who populated ancient Athens, Rome, Florence, and London or, for that matter, Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) or Mesa Verde, should remind us that it is within the city where human creativity flourishes. It is where wealth is accumulated and where individuals and their families seek safety in numbers.

Even though cities as governed communities existed thousands of years before the advent of the Roman Empire, it is in Roman law that the term “municipal” is first encountered. Cities by Roman law were called municipia. As such, Roman municipalities were governed, at least in theory, by local law and custom but the residents enjoyed the privileges of Roman citizenship and paid Roman taxes. The term “municipality” is derived from the Latin term municipium and today refers to a unit of general-purpose local government that, in Montana, is called either a “city” or a “town.” The founding of governed communities at Roanoke in 1585, Jamestown in 1607 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 mark the origins of modern cities in the United States. As early as 1653, the community of New York was known as a “city.” One might reasonably suppose that a definition of the term “city” and an accompanying body of municipal law might readily be traced back through these colonial origins to England and thence to the ancient civilizations.

Surprisingly, that is not the case. Modern scholars of municipal law agree that, in the United Sates, the terms “city” or “municipality” never acquired a historically definite, technical meaning in law. As a consequence, the terms municipality, city and town have developed meanings, which depend entirely upon how the terms are defined, employed or intended in a state constitution or in the laws adopted by state legislatures. In short, the legal definition of these commonly used terms may well be different in Montana than in any one of our sister states. For example, Montana law creates only “cities” and “towns” as incorporated municipalities. Unlike a number of other states, there are no incorporated “townships,” “villages” or “boroughs” in Montana.