Law Commons^™

Takings Federalization, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

Federal constitutional law exerts an outsized role and influence over state constitutional law. In takings, Supreme Court jurisprudence has dominated state court interpretations of analogous state constitutional takings provisions. This does not mean, however, that the Supreme Court always leads and the state courts always follow. At times, the opposite is true. There is, indeed, an underappreciated and under addressed role reversal in which the Supreme Court follows the lead of state courts. State takings doctrines have, on limited occasions, influenced federal takings jurisprudence. This federalization of takings is a distinct feature of judicial dual sovereignty where the Supreme Court …

Takings Localism, Nestor M. Davisdson, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

Conflicts over “sanctuary” cities, minimum wage laws, and gender-neutral bathrooms have brought the problematic landscape of contemporary state preemption of local governance to national attention. This Article contends that more covert, although equally robust, state interference can be found in property, with significant consequences for our understanding of takings law.

Takings jurisprudence looks to the states to mediate most tensions between individual property rights and community needs, as the takings federalism literature recognizes. Takings challenges, however, often involve local governments. If the doctrine privileges the democratic process to resolve most takings claims, then, that critical process is a largely local …

State Constitutional General Welfare Doctrine, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

It is black-letter law that the U.S. Supreme Court’s takings doctrine presupposes exercises of eminent domain are in pursuit of valid public uses that require just compensation. But, neither federal doctrine nor the text of the Takings Clause offers any additional constraints. The story of the Supreme Court’s takings jurisprudence is, in other words, incomplete and deserves reexamination. However, the usual protagonists, such as the Supreme Court or federal courts, are not central to this Article’s reexamination. Instead, this Article’s narrative is federalism, its characters are state courts, and its script is state constitutions.

In the post-Kelo v. New London …

A Requiem For Regulatory Takings: Reclaiming Eminent Domain For Constitutional Property Claims, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

For the past forty years, the United States Supreme Court has embraced the doctrine of regulatory takings, despite being unable to provide any coherent and reliable guidance on when a regulation goes so far as to require compensation. But Justice Thomas's admission in Murr v. Wisconsin (2017) that there is no real historical basis for the Court's regulatory takings jurisprudence offers a chance to reconsider the doctrine anew. Looking back to Justice Holmes's prophetic statement in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, that a regulation can go too far and require an exercise of eminent domain to sustain it, I argue …

Are Beach Boundaries Enforceable? Real-Time Locational Uncertainty And The Right To Exclude, Josh Eagle

Faculty Publications

Over the past few decades, landowners have tried to use the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to fully privatize the upper, dry-sand part of the beach. If these efforts were to succeed, there would be a host of negative consequences, and not just for surfers. In most of the states in which beaches are economically important, including California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas, privatized dry sand would mean little to no public access at times when the public, wet-sand part of the beach is submerged, that is, in the hours immediately before and after high tides. Decreased beach use would …

One Parcel Plus One Parcel Equals A "Parcel As A Whole" Murr V. Wisconsin's Fluid Calculations For Regulatory Takings, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Court's most recent major property law case, Murr v. Wisconsin, 137 S. Ct. 1933 (2017), tackles one of the thorny, recurring issues in regulatory takings jurisprudence: what is the proper “denominator” to use in determining whether a government regulation has so greatly diminished the economic value of a parcel of land that it effects a taking? More specifically, Murr looked at what constitutes the “parcel as a whole” when a landowner holds title to two contiguous lots. Should a court assess the economic impact on the value of each lot separately or the impact on the value of the …

Federalism, Convergence, And Divergence In Constitutional Property, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

Federal law exerts a gravitational force on state actors, resulting in widespread conformity to federal law and doctrine at the state level. This has been well recognized in the literature, but scholars have paid little attention to this phenomenon in the context of constitutional property. Traditionally, state takings jurisprudence—in both eminent domain and regulatory takings—has strongly gravitated towards the Supreme Court’s takings doctrine. This long history of federal-state convergence, however, was disrupted by the Court’s controversial public use decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In the wake of Kelo, states resisted the Court’s validation of the …

Written Testimony Of Gerald S. Dickinson For The U.S. Senate Hearing On Fencing Along The Southwest Border (Senate Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs), Gerald S. Dickinson

Testimony

It is with great pleasure that I submit this written testimony at the request of the Office of the Ranking Member, Senator McCaskill. I am pleased that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is devoting its April 4, 2017 hearing to an examination of efforts to secure the southwest border through the construction of a wall. Further, as a law professor who writes and teaches in the areas of constitutional property and land use, I take great interest in the committee's focus on the legal authorities related to the wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

On The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Of Lucas: Making Or Breaking The Takings Claim, Carol Brown

Law Faculty Publications

In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, the United States Supreme Court established the premier categorical regulatory takings standard with certain limited exceptions. The Lucas rule establishes that private property owners are entitled to compensation for a taking under the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause when a government regulation “denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land.” Today, Lucas remains the controlling law on categorical regulatory takings. But in application, how much does Lucas still matter?

My review of more than 1,600 cases in state and federal court reveals only twenty-seven cases in twenty-five years in which courts found …

A Hobbesian Bundle Of Lockean Sticks: The Property Rights Legacy Of Justice Scalia, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No modern United States Supreme Court Justice has stimulated more thought and debate about the constitutional meaning of property than Antonin Scalia. This essay evaluates his efforts to change the prevailing interpretation of the Takings Clause. Scalia sought to ground it in clear rules embodying a reactionary defense of private owners’ prerogatives against environmental and land use regulation. Ultimately, Scalia aimed to authorize federal judicial oversight of state property law developments, whether through legislative or judicial innovation. In hindsight, he stands in a long tradition of conservative judges using property law as a constitutional baseline by which to restrain regulation.

Partial Takings, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Partial takings allow the government to expropriate the parts of an asset it needs, leaving the owner the remainder. Both vital and common, partial takings present unique challenges to the standard rules of eminent domain. Partial takings may result in the creation of suboptimal, and even unusable, parcels. Additionally, partial takings create assessment problems that do not arise when parcels are taken as a whole. Finally, partial takings engender opportunities for inefficient strategic behavior on the part of the government after the partial taking has been carried out. Current jurisprudence fails to resolve these problems and can even exacerbate them. …

When Scalia Wasn't Such An Originalist, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Although Justice Scalia generally described himself as an originalist, his opinion in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council rejected originalist arguments. Why? This article suggests that pre-Lucas precedent and the ambiguity of the historical record might justify his methodology.

Land Use Law Update: The 2015 Mid-Year Roundup, Sarah Adams-Schoen

Scholarly Works

This update summarizes New York cases related to land use and zoning that were decided in the first half of 2015.

Requiem For Regulation, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

This comment reviews U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past 100 years which have considered the constitutional limitations on governmental powers. It finds that at the three-quarter mark of the 20th century, a remarkable set of Court precedents had swollen the regulatory powers of governments while shrinking private rights to property and contract. But since the Reagan years, a more conservative Court has undertaken to curtail governmental activity in general, and to limit federal, state, and local planning in particular. A number of 5-4 decisions expanded private property rights and contracted the scope of the federal “commerce power.” The comment …

Exactions For The Future, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

New development commonly contributes to projected infrastructural demands caused by multiple parties or amplifies the impacts of anticipated natural hazards. At times, these impacts only can be addressed through coordinated actions over a lengthy period. In theory, the ability of local governments to attach conditions, or “exactions,” to discretionary land use permits can serve as one tool to accomplish this end. Unlike traditional exactions that regularly respond to demonstrably measurable, immediate development harms, these “exactions for the future” — exactions responsive to cumulative anticipated future harms — admittedly can present land assembly concerns and involve inherently uncertain long-range government forecasting. …

Proposed Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Justice John Paul Stevens - His Take On Takings, Alan C. Weinstein

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This commentary reviews and analyzes Justice John Paul Stevens's role in shaping the Court's views on the takings issue in land use regulation.

Slides: Second Thoughts About The Antiquities Act: Does The Process For Public Land Decisionmaking Have An Ethical Dimension?, James R. Rasband

The Past, Present, and Future of Our Public Lands: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Public Land Law Review Commission’s Report, One Third of the Nation’s Land (Martz Summer Conference, June 2-4)

Presenter: James R. Rasband, Dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University (Provo, UT)

32 slides

Rising Tides--Changing Title: Court To Mull Takings Issue, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Walton County v. Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc., where novel questions arose concerning sea level rise and constitutional property rights of beachfront landowners. In Florida, the state government owns in trust, all beach property below the mean high tide water line, while beachfront landowners own the rights to any land above the mean high tide water line. The line shifts along with beachfront as the beach expands and contracts. In this Florida case, landowners challenge a state statute, which precludes the ocean property line from shifting in favor of the private …

The Track Record On Takings Legislation: Lessons From Democracy's Laboratories, John D. Echeverria, Thekla Hansen-Young

Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute Papers & Reports

This report by the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, entitled "The Track Record on Takings Legislation: Lessons from Democracy's Laboratories," examines the experiences of Florida, Oregon, and several other states with legislation implementing the property rights agenda. The report is the first comprehensive effort to systematically identify and evaluate the on-the-ground consequences of so-called takings "compensation" laws. The major findings of the report are that the takings agenda has undermined community protections by forcing a roll back of existing legal rules and/or by exerting a chilling effect on new legislative activity, special interests such as developers and timber companies …

Law Of The Land – Year In Review, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This column reviews trends and interesting cases in land use law as reported on “Law of the Land” during the last half of 2007. “Law of the Land” is a blog created to be of interest to land use lawyers, planners, developers, professors, and students. The blog is updated daily with a review of a recent land use case decided by a state or federal court. In addition, the site has reported on relevant gubernatorial executive orders, offered book reviews, and occasionally starts a discussion on current events issues, such as climate change and has led to robust debate about …

The New Nuisance: An Antidote To Wetland Loss, Sprawl, And Global Warming, Christine A. Klein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Marking the fifteenth anniversary of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council -- the modern U.S. Supreme Court's seminal regulatory takings decision -- this Article surveys Lucas's impact upon regulations that restrict wetland filling, sprawling development, and the emission of greenhouse gases. The Lucas Court set forth a new categorical rule of governmental liability for regulations that prohibit all economically beneficial use of land, but also established a new defense that draws upon the states' common law of nuisance and property. Unexpectedly, that defense has taken on a life of its own -- forming what this Article calls the new …

Historical Evolution And Future Of Natural Resources Law And Policy: The Beginning Of An Argument And Some Modest Predictions, Sally K. Fairfax, Helen Ingram, Leigh Raymond

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

8 pages.

Includes bibliographical references

"Sally Fairfax, UC-Berkeley, Helen Ingram, UC-Irvine, and Leigh Raymond, Purdue University" -- Agenda

The Growing Influence Of Tort And Property Law On Natural Resources Law: Case Studies Of Coal Bed Methane Development And Geologic Carbon Sequestration, Alexandra B. Klass

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

19 pages.

"Alexandra B. Klass, Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School"

Law Casebook Description And Table Of Contents: Constitutional Environmental And Natural Resources Law [Outline], Jim May, Robin Craig

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

6 pages.

"James May, Widener University School of Law" -- Agenda

A Warning To States — Accepting This Invitation May Be Hazardous To Your Health (Safety, And Public Welfare): An Analysis Of Post-Kelo, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Focusing on Delaware, this article will argue that the United States Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London gave state legislatures an open invitation to shape their public use frameworks, but their responses must be measured and well-reasoned because the consequences of reactionary legislation may put a stranglehold on state and local governments trying to exercise eminent domain for unanimously accepted public uses. Part I will trace the most pertinent federal jurisprudence through Kelo. Part II will survey Delaware’s public use jurisprudence. Part III will introduce the Delaware General Assembly’s legislative response to Kelo. Part IV will serve as …

Planning As Public Use?, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This short Essay explores the Supreme Court's suggestion in Kelo v. New London that public, participatory planning may be a constitutional safe harbor that separates impermissible private takings from presumptively valid public ones. After briefly reviewing the Court's discussion of the planning that preceded the Kelo litigation, the Essay examines how Kelo's emphasis on planning departs from standard rational basis review of economic policies and asks what such a departure means for future public-use litigants. The Essay then explores three possible practical benefits of a constitutional rule that encourages the government to engage in detailed planning before exercising the power …

Slides: Sea Level Rise: Let The Lawsuits Begin!, John P. Casey

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Presenter: John P. Casey, Land Use Attorney, Robinson & Cole, Hartford, CT.

1 page and 75 slides.

Using the changing nature of coastal shorelines as a basis for his presentation, Mr. Casey will discuss the challenges of protecting a landowner's interest in preserving her land, while at the same time protecting the environment and respecting the natural changes that are bound to occur over time. Mr. Casey will focus on the how the application of laws designed to protect the environment - especially in cases where changes take place over time to alter the physical characteristics of the land - …

Measure 37 And A Spoonful Of Kelo: A Recipe For Property Rights Activists At The Ballot Box, Patricia E. Salkin, Amy Lavine

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Regulating Land Use In A Constitutional Shadow: The Institutional Contexts Of Exactions, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

The regulatory takings doctrine, the Supreme Court declared in Lingle v. Chevron, concerns the effects of a regulation on the incidents of property ownership. It serves as a constitutional protection against regulations that impose the functional equivalent to a classic taking of private property (an appropriation by the state or an ouster), and it requires compensation for owners who are subject to such regulations. Just as significant as declaring what the regulatory takings doctrine is, theCourt in Lingle also declared what it is not: it is not a judicial check onthe validity or reasonableness of a regulation that …