Law Commons^™

Doing A Double Take: Rail-Trail Takings Litigation In The Post-Brandt Trust Era, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

After providing a brief explanation of railroad development, railbanking, the takings cases, and the Brandt Trust decision, this Article will explore the implications of each of these three legal issues at the heart of the takings disputes. What makes the decision in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States particularly disappointing is not that the Court came to the wrong conclusion in its interpretation of the railroad’s interest in federally granted railroad rights of way (“FGROWs”) granted pursuant to the 1875 General Railroad Right of Way Act, but that its wrong interpretation adds all of the 1875 Act FGROW …

New Era Of Lavish Land Grants: Taking Public Property For Private Use And Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

J.R. Pole's new book, Contract and Consent: Representation and the Jury in Anglo-American Legal History, is a delightful romp through centuries of Anglo-American history, law, and political theory. It would be better titled Contract, Consent, Juries, Sovereignty, and the State: A History of the Anglicization of Western Political Ideas. But in any event, this delightful set of essays, some more closely linked together than others, spans a breathtaking set of ideas--from sovereignty to the social compact to slavery to the moral agency of juries--through a breathtaking set of sources--from Slade's Case to Shakespeare to Aquinas to Faust to …

Reliance Interests And Takings Liability For Rail-Trail Conversions: Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

On October 1, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a relatively obscure case,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States. On its face, the case involves an interpretation of the property rights created by the General Railroad Right of Way Act of 1875, which gave to any railroad, chartered by a state or territory, "[t]he right of way [200 feet wide] through the public lands of the United States." The 1875 Act was passed after a brief hiatus in congressional support for railroads following the era of lavish land grants between 1862 and 1871, in which over …

Charitable Deductions For Rail-Trail Conversions: Reconciling The Partial Interest Rule And The National Trails System Act, Scott Andrew Bowman, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines an undeveloped legal topic at the intersection of tax law and real property law: charitable deductions from income tax liability for donations of railroad corridors that are to be converted into recreational trails. The very popular rails-to-trails program assists in the conversion of abandoned railroad corridors into hiking and biking trails. However, the legal questions surrounding the property rights of these corridors have been complex and highly litigated. In 1983, Congress amended the National Trails System Act to provide a mechanism for facilitating these conversions, a process called railbanking. In essence, a railroad transfers its real property …

Eminent Domain, Exactions, And Railbanking: Can Recreational Trails Survive The Court’S Fifth Amendment Takings Jurisprudence, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article attempts to locate the legal aspects of recreational trail development within the increasingly powerful property rights movement. The most complex result of this rising property rights rhetoric is a clear shift in constitutional takings doctrine to be more sympathetic to landowners' arguments. Thus, the interplay of takings decisions and trails development will be the focus of most of this article.

Part II provides a brief account of the legal structure of governmental land use controls and the current state of takings jurisprudence to form a basic background for the different ways in which recreational trails have been developed. …