Judicial implementation of New Jersey's "fair share" housing doctrine in the Mount Laurel cases has been controversial because of the perception that the courts were intruding on policy and planning matters better left to the political branches. A paradox resulted. Strong judicial remedies were needed to break the political stalemate on issues of affordable housing, but voluntary compliance that could have avoided these stringent remedies became politically impossible for many municipalities because of the controversy over the courts' role. A new approach to fair-share compliance, called "growth share," has now been proposed, which seeks to break out of the paradox by giving deference to local governments on land use development issues so long as affordable housing opportunities are created simultaneously and in fair proportion to the actual growth experienced by each municipality. Potential strengths and weaknesses of this new approach are explored.

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Charles Haar, the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law Emeritus at the Harvard Law School and a certified elder statesman of the housing and land-use community, was one of those scholar politicians of the 1960s who spun out innovative theories in law re views and then moved into government to see them applied. His generation inspired mine to pursue law as a means to serve the pub lic interest. But the days of the Kennedy brothers' Camelot are long past. Today, big government and "big courts" alike are seen as parts of the problem. In the more austere political climate of the 1990s, however, Charles Haar is not the least bit repentant, and he has found a magnificent topic around which to reaffirm his faith in the capacity of big government and, particularly, big courts to move us collectively toward the just society. In Suburbs Un der Siege: Race, Sp ace, and Audacious Ju dges, Professor Haar dissects New Jersey's famous Mount Laurel cases,1 finding in them not only a compelling demonstration of judicial success in the arduous task of law reform, but confirmation that courts can be better than legisla tures at such a task.

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