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Some Preliminary Thoughts On The Law Of Neighbors, Jim Smith

Scholarly Works

A fundamental characteristic of real property law, one that is definitional in nature, is that its subject matter consists of land parcels. A land parcel, in contrast to an ownership interest such as a fee simple estate, is not an abstraction. Each land parcel has a physical reality, and virtually all land parcels abut other parcels. Each parcel has one particular location, defined by its proximity to other pieces of property. The value of a land parcel depends heavily upon its location, and the nature of neighboring parcels has a major impact in determining that value.

Owners of neighboring parcels …

The Structural Causes Of Mortgage Fraud, Jim Smith

Scholarly Works

Mortgage fraud, often a violation of federal and state criminal statutes, covers a number of different types of behavior, all of which have the common denominator of conduct that has the intent or effect of impairing the value of residential mortgage loans. Mortgage fraud has become prevalent over the past decade and shows no signs of diminishing despite the collapse of domestic housing markets during the past two years. This paper analyzes the complex relationships between prime mortgage loan markets, subprime markets, and various types of mortgage fraud. This paper concludes that the root causes of mortgage fraud are associated …

The Problem Of Social Cost In A Genetically Modified Age, Paul J. Heald, James C. Smith

Scholarly Works

In Part I of this Article, we apply the Coase Theorem and its most useful corollary to the problem of pollen drift. We conclude that the liability of pollen polluters should be governed by balancing rules against nuisance law, to be applied on a case-by-case basis, rather than by a blanket liability or immunity rule. We also conclude that truly bystanding non-GMO farmers should have a viable defense to patent infringement because liability would result in the application of a reverse Pigovian tax that cannot be justified under accepted economic theory. Only a contextual approach can account for the wide …

The Law Of Yards, James C. Smith

Scholarly Works

Property law regimes have a significant impact on the ability of individuals to engage in freedom of expression. Some property rules advance freedom of expression, and other rules retard freedom of expression. This Article examines the inhibiting effects on expression of public land use regulations. The focus is on two types of aesthetic regulations: (1) landscape regulations, including weed ordinances, that regulate yards; and (2) architectural regulations that regulate the exterior appearance of houses. Such regulations sometimes go too far in curtailing a homeowner's freedom of expression. Property owners' expressive conduct should be recognized as “symbolic speech” under the First …

The Power Of Congress "Without Limitation": The Property Clause And Federal Regulation Of Private Property, Peter A. Appel

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Congress has overlooked a powerful tool for regulating within state jurisdictions: the Property Clause of the United States Constitution. The United States Government owns land in every state and approximately thirty percent of the total land in the United States. The federal government's authority to regulate its property within states derives from the Property Clause and has been described by the Supreme Court as "without limitation."

Professor Appel traces the historical development of the Constitution's Property Clause, from its pre-constitutional origins through modern Supreme Court decisions and academic conceptions. Professor Appel compares the narrow view of Property Clause scholarship - …

Georgia's Proposed Dynasty Trust: Giving The Dead Too Much Control?, Verner F. Chaffin

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Georgia should resist the urge to join the parade of states that have overturned the Rule Against Perpetuities. We do not neet the dynasty trust in Georgia. The repeal of perpetuities laws ignores the reasons for the Rule Against Perpetuities and uncritically assumes that preserving family wealth in perpetuity is a desirable social goal. The Rule is still needed to prevent persons long removed from the current scene from tying up wealth without restriction and from unduly influencing the behavior of those living in the present. For background purposes, this Article reviews the legislative history of Georgia's Rule Against Perpetuities …

Markets And Law Reform: The Tension Between Uniformity And Idealism, James C. Smith

Scholarly Works

The most ambitious effort at uniform property legislation ever launched was the Uniform Land Transactions Act (“ULTA”) and its companion, the Uniform Simplification of Land Transfers Act (“USLTA”). Both Acts, however, met with singular failure in the sense of uniform legislative shunning and have not substantially influenced judges in their lawmaking roles. In published opinions, very few courts have relied upon the ULTA or USLTA positions for analogous support.

Why did a single state legislature, somewhere in America, not pass at least one of the Acts? We cannot tell for sure why the legislatures eschewed the USLTA and the ULTA. …

Thinking Property At Rome, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

It is a commonplace among writers on slavery that there is an inherent contradiction or a necessary confusion in regarding slaves as both human beings and things. In law there is no such contradiction or confusion. Slaves are both property and human beings. Their humanity is not denied but (in general) they are refused legal personality, a very different matter.

Things as property may be classed in various ways, and the classification may then have an impact on owners' rights and duties. A thing may be corporeal or incorporeal, immoveable or moveable. Some moveables may be classed as res se …

The Transformation Of American Property Law: A Comparative Law Approach, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

This Article looks at aspects of a particular societal problem as it was approached at different historical periods in Roman, French, and American property law. The main point of the Article is to clarify understanding of the American course of development through an awareness of how the problem was dealt with elsewhere. This awareness will cast doubt on the simplicity of the American course of development as explained in a distinguished book, and on the relationship of the legal development to economic change. In THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN LAW, 1780-1860, Morton J. Horwitz seeks "to show that one of the …

Tenant Remedies For Breach Of Habitability: Tort Dimensions Of A Contract Concept, Jim Smith

Scholarly Works

This article advances the premise that the hybrid contract-property model of leases may be appropriate to provide flexible choices for many areas of landlord-tenant law and, perhaps, may be suitable as a general model, but that it has failed as applied to the question of the tenant's remedies for breach of the warranty of habitability. As applied to remedies, the contract-property hybrid is a false dichotomy, or perhaps more accurately, the wrong dichotomy. The proper analysis of tenant remedies when the landlord breaches the habitability duty requires that a line be drawn between the tort duties and the contract duties …

Landlord's Remedies When The Tenant Abandons: Property, Contract, And Leases, Sarajane N. Love

Scholarly Works

Because the current remedial scheme represents a blend of property and contract Law, an adequate assessment requires delving into the property framework that existed before its revamping by contract. In part II, therefore, the focus will be on the remedial options traditionally associated with property law.... Part III will examine the significant contract doctrines in this area of the law -- breach by anticipatory repudiation and the avoidable consequences rule. An important concern is whether the contract and property rules have been or can be melded together in an overall remedial scheme that is conceptually understandable and practically consistent in …

The Rule Against Perpetuities As Applied To Georgia Wills And Trusts: A Survey And Suggestions For Reform, Verner F. Chaffin

Scholarly Works

The prevalent criticism seems to be that the Rule Against Perpetuities, as presently applied, does not further the best interests of society and therefore should be changed to make it work better. To determine how well the Rule is operating, a critical examination will be made of Georgia statutory law and decisions involving its application to class gifts, private trusts, charitable gifts, commercial transactions, powers of appointment, and to various types of future interests including reverters, rights of entry, and executory interests. This Article will also explore techniques for avoiding the lethal effect of the Rule through draftsmanship, judicial construction, …

Group Homes, Families, And Meaning In The Law Of Subdivision Covenants, Robert D. Brussack

Scholarly Works

Part I of this Article discusses two questions central to a general account of the problem of meaning in the law of subdivision covenants. First, whose meaning ought to count? The answer to this question is developed principally by contrasting the meaning problem in covenants law with the related problem in other legal realms such as contractual and statutory interpretation. Second, what should be the role in contemporary covenants law of the traditional rule requiring that ambiguity in covenant language be resolved in favor of the free use of land. Here the Article explores the nature of ambiguity and critiques …

Nineteenth Century Anti-Entrepreneurial Nuisance Injunctions--Avoiding The Chancellor, Paul M. Kurtz

Scholarly Works

This Article will explain how the 19th-century entrepreneur, faced with a hostile rule of strict liability for interference with the use and enjoyment of property, avoided the heavy hand of the chancellor's injunction. Although the term "entrepreneur" describes a diverse group of businessmen--from the mill owner to the early 19th century to the slaughterhouse operator of later in the century--the denominator common to all nuisance action in this period was a developmental use of real property that interfered with the use of neighboring property. An examination of the responses of courts to private nuisance suits between an individual property owner …

Municipal Annexation In Georgia: The Contiguity Conundrum, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

The Georgia law of municipal annexation possesses a rich history both statutory and decisional. Strangely subdued in this history, however, is the concept of contiguity. Although this term has been stated and defined by the legislature, the concept has historically provoked little controversy, and the courts have stayed away from it with fervor. Recently, this has changed. The purpose here, therefore, is to mark what may well be the origin of a new chapter in the Georgia law of municipal annexation.

Compensation Of The Georgia Real Estate Broker, Candler S. Rogers

Scholarly Works

Real estate brokers serve an important function in the commercial world by bringing buyers and sellers together. The broker's compensation for this service is usually predetermined by an agreement known as a "listing" between the broker and his client. In this Article, Professor Rogers examines various types of these listings in light of their practical significance under Georgia law.

Hawkins V. Town Of Shaw: The Court As City Manager, C. Ronald Ellington, Lawrence F. Jones

Scholarly Works

For over one hundred years Congress and the federal courts have pursued the goal of racial equality in the United States. In areas such as voting rights, public accommodations, and housing, Congress and the courts have interacted closely, with broad judicial interpretations upholding major remedial legislation. Moreover, when confronted by official state sources of racial discrimination, courts have traditionally responded to the clear command of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment without awaiting congressional action. Brown v. Board of Education stands as perhaps the best known instance in which a court has, on its own, ordered the elimination …

Municipal Annexation In Georgia: Nay-Sayers Beward (Plantation Pipe Line Co. V. City Of Bremen), R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

In the Fall 1967 issue of the Georgia Law Review, there appeared a somewhat ambitious effort to survey the law of municipal annexation in Georgia. That rather stuffy treatment at least served to demonstrate the existence of a history on the subject dating from the beginning of time in this State. It also purported to make one or two daring thrusts at formulating principles then apparently settled and at identifying legal points around which further evolution might be anticipated.

Some apparently believed that these thrusts were more negative than daring and that they reflected an approach which was basically …

The Law Of Municipal Annexation In Georgia: Evolution Of A Concept?, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

The time has come to think seriously and in detail about municipal annexation. The effort here, then, represents a return to basics. The justification for it rests on the point that Georgia does indeed possess a rich history in annexation law. What of this history? How has it dictated the law's development? What are the methods of annexation presently available to municipalities in Georgia? Upon what authority are these methods bottomed, and what are the possible limitation upon their effectiveness? Is the point at which the law has now arrived the culmination of evolving a deliberate concept or simply the …