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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Constitutionality Of Using Eminent Domain To Condemn Underwater Mortgage Loans, Katharine Roller
The Constitutionality Of Using Eminent Domain To Condemn Underwater Mortgage Loans, Katharine Roller
Michigan Law Review
One of the most visible and devastating components of the financial crisis that began in 2007 and 2008 has been a nationwide foreclosure crisis. In the wake of ultimately ineffective attempts at federal policy intervention to address the foreclosure crisis, a private firm has proposed that counties and municipalities use their power of eminent domain to seize “underwater” mortgage loans—-mortgage loans in which the debt exceeds the value of the underlying property—-from the private securitization trusts that currently hold them. Having condemned the mortgage loans, the counties and municipalities would reduce the debt to a level below the value of …
Residential Protectionism And The Legal Mythology Of Home, Stephanie M. Stern
Residential Protectionism And The Legal Mythology Of Home, Stephanie M. Stern
Michigan Law Review
The theory that one's home is a psychologically special form of property has become a cherished principle of property law, cited by legislators and touted extensively in the legal scholarship. Influential scholars, most notably Margaret Radin, have asserted that ongoing control over one's home is necessary for an individual's very personhood and ability to flourish in society. Other commentators have expounded a communitarian vision of the home as rooting individuals in communities of close-knit social ties. Remarkably, the legal academy has accepted these theoretical accounts of the home without demanding a shred of empirical evidence. The misplaced belief in the …
Supreme Neglect Of Text And History, William Michael Treanor
Supreme Neglect Of Text And History, William Michael Treanor
Michigan Law Review
Since his classic book Takings appeared in 1985, Richard Epstein's ideas have profoundly shaped debate about the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause to a degree that no other scholar can even begin to approach. His broad, original, and stunningly ambitious reading of the clause has powerfully influenced thinking in academia, in the judiciary, and in the political arena. The firestorm of controvery that followed the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kelo - in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a municipal urban renewal plan that displaced long-time homeowners and conveyed their land to developers - is in critical part …
Property And Relative Status, Nestor M. Davidson
Property And Relative Status, Nestor M. Davidson
Michigan Law Review
Property does many things-it incentivizes productive activity, facilitates exchange, forms an integral part of individual identity, and shapes communities. But property does something equally fundamental: it communicates. And perhaps the most ubiquitous and important messages that property communicates have to do with relative status, with the material world defining and reinforcing a variety of economic, social, and cultural hierarchies. This status-signalingf unction of property-withp roperty serving as an important locus for symbolic meaning through which people compare themselves to others-complicates premises underlying central discourses in contemporary property theory. In particular, status signaling can skew property's incentive and allocative benefits, leading …
The Neglected Political Economy Of Eminent Domain, Nicole Stelle Garnett
The Neglected Political Economy Of Eminent Domain, Nicole Stelle Garnett
Michigan Law Review
This Article challenges a foundational assumption about eminent domain- namely, that owners are systematically undercompensated because they receive only fair market value for their property. In fact, scholars may have overstated the undercompensation problem because they have focused on the compensation required by the Constitution, rather than on the actual mechanics of the eminent domain process. The Article examines three ways that "Takers" (i.e., nonjudicial actors in the eminent domain process) minimize undercompensation. First, Takers may avoid taking high subjective value properties. (By way of illustration, Professor Garnett discusses evidence that Chicago's freeways were rerouted in the 1950s to avoid …
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Pliability Rules, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Michigan Law Review
In 1543, the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, determined the heliocentric design of the solar system. Copernicus was motivated in large part by the conviction that Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric astronomical model, which dominated scientific thought at that time, was too incoherent, complex, and convoluted to be true. Hence, Copernicus made a point of making his model coherent, simple, and elegant. Nearly three and a half centuries later, at the height of the impressionist movement, the French painter Claude Monet set out to depict the Ruen Cathedral in a series of twenty paintings, each presenting the cathedral in a different light. Monet's …
Eminent Domain-Urban Renewal-Broader Powers To Take Private Property For Public Use, Roger L. Mcmanus
Eminent Domain-Urban Renewal-Broader Powers To Take Private Property For Public Use, Roger L. Mcmanus
Michigan Law Review
Defendant city instituted a comprehensive urban redevelopment plan under which condemnation and purchase of blighted property would be followed by extensive demolition and clearance. This land was then to be sold subject to certain use restrictions to private developers, chiefly for light industry. Plaintiff, an owner of real estate described as "improved and enhanced with . . . a good, sound, sanitary, modem and well-kept building," brought an action in a lower state court seeking a declaratory judgment against the constitutionality of the Washington Urban Renewal Law, and an injunction to prevent defendant city from condemning his property under the …
Taxation - Federal Income Tax - Severance Damages To Real Property Are A Component Of Charitable Deduction, Michael M. Hughes
Taxation - Federal Income Tax - Severance Damages To Real Property Are A Component Of Charitable Deduction, Michael M. Hughes
Michigan Law Review
The United States selected part of petitioners' estate for construction of a Nike missile base and began condemnation proceedings and negotiations for sale of the premises in lieu of condemnation. Upon failure of the parties to agree on a sale price, petitioners made a gift of the site and certain easements in adjoining land to the United States for so long as the site was used as a missile base. In their 1955 return petitioners claimed a charitable deduction of $69,782 as the fair market value, including severance damages to the remaining portion of their estate, of the property conveyed. …
Eminent Domain - Procedure - Relation Of Judge And Jury In Michigan Condemnation Proceedings, John H. Jackson S.Ed.
Eminent Domain - Procedure - Relation Of Judge And Jury In Michigan Condemnation Proceedings, John H. Jackson S.Ed.
Michigan Law Review
The relationship of judge to jury in Michigan condemnation proceedings presents in many ways a merger of some of the problems and questions contained in the relationship of judge to jury in civil trials, and of court to tribunal in administrative law. Theorists as well as the practicing lawyer in Michigan and some other states" may well find in the development of the Michigan condemnation proceeding an interesting example of the growth of a procedure for adjudication, in a context of cross-fire between legislative ideas and judicial interpretation of a constitutional provision.
Real Property - Compensation For Abrogation Of A Restrictive Covenant By Public Authority, Howard N. Thiele, Jr. S.Ed.
Real Property - Compensation For Abrogation Of A Restrictive Covenant By Public Authority, Howard N. Thiele, Jr. S.Ed.
Michigan Law Review
It is the purpose of this comment to examine the legal consequences produced when the tranquility of the residential district is disturbed by governmental action.
Railroads -- Extent Of Title Acquired By Railroad By Adverse Possession Of Land Used As Right-Of-Way - Effect On Mineral Rights, Roy L. Rogers
Railroads -- Extent Of Title Acquired By Railroad By Adverse Possession Of Land Used As Right-Of-Way - Effect On Mineral Rights, Roy L. Rogers
Michigan Law Review
In a recent Michigan case it appeared that for more than the statutory period of limitation the plaintiff railroad had maintained a right-of-way over land to which the defendant held the record title. A decree quieting title in fee simple absolute in the plaintiff railroad was sought in order to determine the ownership of the oil and gas underlying the right-of-way. The court held that the railroad acquired by adverse user of the right-of-way no title to the oil and gas or other minerals beneath the surface of the land.
Eminent Domain - Slum Clearance And Low-Cost Housing Program As Public Use
Eminent Domain - Slum Clearance And Low-Cost Housing Program As Public Use
Michigan Law Review
A New York statute set up a public corporation with power to investigate and study housing conditions in the city, and to plan and carry out projects for the clearance of slums and the providing of housing accommodations for persons of low income. The corporation sought to condemn certain property owned by the defendant, who resisted the proceeding on the ground that the taking was not for a public use and therefore violative of the Fourteenth Amendment and a similar provision in the state constitution. Held, that the taking was for a public benefit and that therefore the constitutional …