Digital Commons Network^™

The Resilience Of Property, Lynda L. Butler

Lynda L. Butler

Resilience is essential to the ability of property to face transforming social and environmental change. For centuries, property has responded to such change through a dialectical process that identifies emerging disciplinary perspectives and debates conflicting values and norms. This dialectic promotes the resilience of property, allowing it to adapt to changing conditions and needs. Today the mainstream economic theory dominating common law property is progressively being intertwined with constitutionally protected property, undermining its long-term resilience. The coupling of the economic vision of ordinary property with constitutional property embeds the assumptions, choices, and values of the economic theory into both realms …

Property-As-Society, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

Modern regulatory takings disputes present a key battleground for competing conceptions of property. This Article offers the following account of the three leading theories: a libertarian view sees property as creating a sphere of individual freedom and control (property-as-liberty); a pecuniary view sees property as a tool of economic investment (property-as-investment); and a progressive view sees property as serving a wide range of evolving communal values that include, but are not limited to, those advanced under both the libertarian and pecuniary conceptions (property-as-society). Against this backdrop, the Article offers two contentions. First, on normative grounds, it asserts that the conception …

On Bargaining For Development, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In his recent article, Bargaining for Development Post-Koontz, Professor Sean Nolon concludes that the Supreme Court’s recent ill-defined expansion of the circumstances in which land use permit conditions might give rise to takings liability in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District will chill the state’s willingness to communicate with permit applicants about mitigation measures. He sets out five courses that government entities might take in this confusing and chilling post-Koontz world, each of which leaves something to be desired from the perspective of both developers and the public more generally.

This responsive essay proceeds in two parts. First, …

Progressive Property Moving Forward, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In his thought-provoking recent article, “The Ambition and Transformative Potential of Progressive Property,” Ezra Rosser contends that, in the course of laying the foundations of a theory grounded in property’s social nature, scholars who participated in the renowned 2009 Cornell symposium on progressive property have “glossed over” property law’s continuing conquest of American Indian lands and the inheritance of privileges that stem from property-based discrimination against African Americans. I fully share Rosser’s concerns regarding past and continuing racialized acquisition and distribution, if not always his characterization of the select progressive works he critiques. Where I focus in this essay, though, …

Legislative Exactions And Progressive Property, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

Exactions — a term used to describe certain conditions that are attached to land-use permits issued at the government’s discretion — ostensibly oblige property owners to internalize the costs of the expected infrastructural, environmental, and social harms resulting from development. This Article explores how proponents of progressive conceptions of property might respond to the open question of whether legislative exactions should be subject to the same level of judicial scrutiny to which administrative exactions are subject in constitutional takings cases. It identifies several first-order reasons to support the idea of immunizing legislative exactions from heightened takings scrutiny. However, it suggests …

The "Public Uses" Of Eminent Domain: History And Policy, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

This paper examines the effects and implications of the ‘public use’ requirement for the exercise of eminent domain in the United States. It is part of an ongoing inquiry the consequences of eminent domain in the United States. The first part examines the history of the public use requirement, both how the doctrine has been articulated and logically extended and what purposes have been accomplished under it. The second part of the paper is an analytic critique of the public use doctrine. After considering whether any principled standard can be developed to delimit the proper uses of eminent domain, it …

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Rlupia And The Limits Of Religious Institutionalism, Zachary A. Bray

Zachary Bray

What special protections, if any, should religious organizations receive from local land use controls? The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”)—a deeply flawed statute—has been a magnet for controversy since its passage in 2000. Yet until recently, RLUIPA has played little role in debates about “religious institutionalism,” a set of ideas that suggest religious institutions play a distinctive role in developing the framework for religious liberty and that they deserve comparably distinctive deference and protection. This is starting to change: RLUIPA’s magnetic affinity for controversy has begun to connect conflicts over religious land use with larger debates about …

Taking The Oceanfront Lot, Josh Eagle

Josh Eagle

Oceanfront landowners and states share a property boundary that runs between the wet and dry parts of the shore. This legal coastline is different from an ordinary land boundary. First, on sandy beaches, the line is constantly in flux, and it cannot be marked except momentarily. Without the help of a surveyor and a court, neither the landowner nor a citizen walking down the beach has the ability to know exactly where the line lies. This uncertainty means that, as a practical matter, ownership of some part of the beach is effectively shared. Second, the common law establishes that the …

Foreground Principles, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared for decades that, for Takings Clause purposes, property interests are not created by the Constitution but rather are determined by “existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.” However, the Court has exhibited a strong normative preference for a certain type of independent source — “background principles” of the common law — over others, namely state statutory and administrative law. This Article calls this preference into question. The Article develops a model to demonstrate the four basic categories, or quadrants, of takings decisions that extensive reliance on the …

Proposed Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In the abstract, the site-specific ability to issue conditional approvals offers local governments the flexible option of permitting a development proposal while simultaneously requiring the applicant to offset the project’s external impacts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the exercise of this option in Nollan and Dolan by establishing a constitutional takings framework unique to exaction disputes. This exaction takings construct has challenged legal scholars on several fronts for the better part of the past two decades. For one, Nollan and Dolan place a far greater burden on the government in justifying exactions it attaches to a development approval than …

When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler

Laura S. Underkuffler

No abstract provided.

Land Use Impact Fees: Does Koontz V. St. Johns River Water Management District Echo An Arkansas Philosophy Of Property Rights?, Carl J. Circo

Carl J. Circo

The Fiduciary Theory Of Governmental Legitimacy And The Natural Charter Of The Judiciary, Luke A. Wake

Luke A. Wake

In legal academia, there are various claims as to the proper role of the courts and the standard of review to be employed in evaluating claims of right. These competing judicial philosophies have been the subject of great debate in recent years. Yet underlying these debates is the question of rights and whether men are entitled, in justice, to assurances of personal autonomy, or whether the concept of rights is a mere legal fiction.

In a recent article in the Journal of Law and Philosophy, Evan Fox-Decent argues that individuals are entitled, at a minimum, to certain guarantees of bodily …

Regulatory Takings: A Chronicle Of The Construction Of A Constitutional Concept, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

In the American constitutional system the sovereign has the power to enact “regulations which are necessary to the common good and general welfare.” But the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution proscribes that : “No person shall be . . . deprived of . . . property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” And the question of whether a sovereign regulation has “taken” private property without just compensation has puzzled the United States Supreme Court for over two hundred years in over four hundred cases. This paper chronicles …

Ripe Standing Vines And The Jurisprudential Tasting Of Matured Legal Wines – And Law & Bananas: Property And Public Choice In The Permitting Process, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

From produce to wine, we only consume things when they are ready. The courts are no different. That concept of “readiness” is how courts address cases and controversies as well. Justiciability doctrines, particularly ripeness, have a particularly important role in takings challenges to permitting decisions. The courts largely hold that a single permit denial does not give them enough information to evaluate whether the denial is in violation of law. As a result of this jurisprudential reality, regulators with discretion have an incentive to use their power to extract rents from those that need their permission. Non-justiciability of permit denials …

Unintended Consequences: Eminent Domain And Affordable Housing, Matthew J. Parlow

Matthew Parlow

"Public Use" And The Independent Judiciary: Condemnation In An Interest-Group Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Article reexamines the doctrine of public use under the Takings Clause and its ability to impede takings for private use through an application of public choice theory. It argues that the judicial validation of interest-group capture of the condemnation power through a relaxed public use standard in Takings Clause review can be explained by interest group politics and public choice theory and by institutional tendencies inherent in the independent judiciary. Legislators can sell the eminent domain power to special interests for almost any use, promising durability in the deal given the low probability that the judiciary will invalidate it …