LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE PLAN OF CHICAGO BY WALTER L. FISHER, OF THE CHICAGO BAR INTRODUCTORY The purpose of an inquiry into the legal aspects of the Plan of Chicago is to ascertain to what extent and in what manner the Plan can be carried out under the existing laws, to suggest such additional legislation as may be necessary or desirable, and to consider how far such legislation is controlled or prevented by existing constitutional provisions. It is gratifying to be able to state at the outset that the main structure of the Plan of Chicago is framed with due regard to the limitations imposed by law upon public enterprises, although important details cannot be carried into effect without some aid from the legislature. In considering the legal aspects of city planning in the United States, the first inquiry naturally relates to the limitations contained in the state and federal constitutions. Governmental powers in the United States, unlike those of many European countries, are defined by written constitutions, which would undoubtedly prevent the imitation here of some of the sweeping undertakings and arbitrary though effective methods of European city planning. European governments have carried to a successful issue many wide-reaching reforms which could be undertaken in this country only with important modifications. It is these modifications with which we are chiefly concerned. A Prussian statute enacted in 1902 empowered the police authorities to prohibit advertising which was calculated to disfigure the landscape;[27] and a provision of the Prussian Code declares that no building shall be so erected as to disfigure cities and public places.[28] Regulations intended to maintain the suburban character of certain localities have been upheld in Prussia, in the absence of statute, as sanitary measures within the jurisdiction of the police authorities, and in other German cities they are authorized by law.[29] The State of Illinois, in attempting to follow such examples, would be obliged to reckon not only with that provision of her own constitution which forbids the taking of private property for public use without just compensation, but also with that other provision, found both in her own constitution and in that of the United States, which declares that no person shall be deprived of property without due process of law. In England, as long ago as 1862, the Metropolitan Local Management Act authorized the Board of Public Works to fix building lines to which all new buildings must conform, and to prohibit the erection of any house beyond the general line of buildings in any street in which the same is situated.[30] Compensation is allowed to any owner of property who can show himself to be injured by such restrictions upon the use of his land, but the parliamentary fiat determines forever that he must submit to the regulations thus imposed upon him.