Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

Dillon's rule

The doctrine that a unit of local government may exercise only those powers that the state expressly grants to it, the powers necessarily and fairly implied from that grant, and the powers that are indispensable to the existence of the unit of local government. ( For the origins of this rule, see 1 John F. Dillon, The Law of Municipal Corporations § 89, at 115 (3d ed. 1881).