Law and Government
Miami-Dade County has operated under a unique metropolitan system of government, a "two-tier federation," since 1957. This was made possible when Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1956 that allowed the people of Dade County (as it was known then) to enact a home rule charter. Prior to this year, home rule did not exist in Florida, and all counties were limited to the same set of powers by the Florida Constitution and state law. Mattie Belle Davis, the first woman from Florida elected to the American Bar Foundation and the second woman to be elected in the US, was the first woman judge of Metropolitan Court of Dade County, Florida.
Read more about this topic: Miami-Dade County, Florida
Famous quotes containing the words law and/or government:
“And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 4:8,9.
“We talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not represented! A semihuman tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off, but I never heard of any good done by such a government as that.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)