Law Commons^™

When (And Why) The Levee Breaks: A Suggested Causation Framework For Takings Claims That Arise From Government-Induced Flooding, Charles D. Wallace

William & Mary Law Review

In 1968, the United States Army Corps of Engineers finished constructing the seventy-six-mile Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) navigational channel. Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin construction to create a shipping route between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. However, the MRGO also caused significant erosion and other environmental detriments that greatly increased the risk of flooding around its vicinity. The Army Corps of Engineers learned about many of these detriments and risks through numerous studies it conducted between 1998 and 2005, but never fully addressed them.

Hurricane Katrina eventually showcased the MR-GO’s defects in violent fashion. …

Property Beyond Exclusion, Lee Anne Fennell

William & Mary Law Review

Property rights have long been associated with a simple and distinctive technology: exclusion. But technologies can become outdated as conditions change, and exclusion is no exception. Recent decades have featured profound changes that have made exclusion a less useful, less necessary, and more expensive way of regulating access to resources. This Article surveys the prospects for a post-exclusion understanding of real and personal property. It proceeds from the premise that property is built upon complementarities, the nature and scale of which have undergone seismic shifts. Physical boundaries and lengthy claims on resources are designed to group complementary elements together in …

Researching And Keeping Up To Date With Real Estate Law In Virginia, Frederick W. Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Murr V. Wisconsin And The Inherent Limits Of Regulatory Takings, Lynda L. Butler

Faculty Publications

This article examines the confusion surrounding constitutional protection of property under the substantive due process and takings clauses, using Murr as a springboard for reconsidering the substantive due process/takings distinction and asking whether the regulatory takings doctrine should remain a viable constitutional concept despite its muddled principles. While powerful reasons support treating as compensable economic regulations that are functionally equivalent to physical takings, important differences between physical and regulatory takings need to be recognized as limits to the degree of equivalence possible and therefore to the regulatory takings doctrine. A look back at the evolutionary paths of substantive due process, …

The State Of Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

William & Mary Law Review

In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the Supreme Court slightly expanded the range of land use permitting situations in which heightened judicial scrutiny is appropriate in a constitutional “exaction” takings case. In crafting a vision of regulators as strategic extortionists of private property interests, though, Koontz prompted many takings observers to predict that the case would provide momentum for a more significant expansion of such scrutiny in takings cases involving land use permit conditions moving forward, and perhaps even an extension into other regulatory contexts, as well.

Five years on, this Article evaluates the extent to which …

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 8, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

The Federalism Dimension of Constitutional Property

October 4-5, 2018

Panel 1: The Federalism Dimension of Constitutional Property: A Tribute to Sterk

Panel 2: Background Principles of Common Law and Constitutional Property

Lunch Roundtable: Other Emerging Issues in Constitutional Protection of Property

Panel 4: The Constitutionality of Land Use Exactions

Contributing Author (Reveley)

Tenant-Victims, Abusers, And No Way To Escape: The Need For An Amendment To The Florida Residential Landlord And Tenant Act, Adam Bent

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Under the Florida Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, there is no right to early lease termination for tenants who must move to escape domestic, stalking, sexual, or dating violence. Florida’s failure to grant a right to early lease termination compounds the physical and psychological harm that victims face; abusers often live with the victim or know where the victim lives. In turn, abusers can return to the victim’s home and harm the victim; often, this results in serious physical harm or death. This Article explains why existing criminal and civil law does not adequately protect victims from their abusers. The …

Time For A Change In Eminent Domain: A “Dirt Farmer’S” Story Shows Why Just Compensation Should Include Lost Profits, Edward Walton

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Right On Time: First Possession In Property And Intellectual Property, Dotan Oliar, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

How should we allocate property rights in unowned tangible and intangible resources? This Article develops a model of original acquisition that draws together common law doctrines of first possession with original acquisition doctrines in patent, copyright, and trademark law. The common denominator is time: in each context, doctrine involves a trade-off between assigning entitlements to resources earlier or later in the process of their development and use. Early awards risk granting exclusivity to parties who may not be capable of putting resources to their best use. Late awards prolong contests for ownership, which may generate waste or discourage acquisition efforts …

Natural Resource And Natural Law Part I: Prior Appropriation, Robert W. Adler

William & Mary Law Review

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of civil disobedience over public land policy in the West, sometimes characterized by armed confrontations between ranchers and federal officials. This trend reflects renewed assertions that applicable positive law violates the natural rights (sometimes of purportedly divine origin) of ranchers and other land users, particularly under the prior appropriation doctrine and grounded in Lockean theories of property. At the same time, Native Americans and environmental activists have also relied on civil disobedience to assert natural rights to a healthy environment based on public trust, fundamental human rights, and other principles. This Article …

How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Bitcoin replicates many of the formal aspects of real estate transactions. Bitcoin transactions have features that closely resemble grantor names, grantee names, legal descriptions, and signatures found in real property deeds. While these “Bitcoin deeds” may be interesting, they are not profound. Bitcoin goes beyond creating simple digital deeds, however, and replicates important institutional aspects of real estate transactions, in particular recordation and title assurance. Deeds to real property are recorded in a central repository (e.g., the public records office), which the parties (and the public) can search to determine title. When one grantor executes more than one deed covering …

Cutting Pension Rights For Public Workers: Don't Look To The Courts For Help, Ronald H. Rosenberg

Faculty Publications

Every day we rely on public employees to provide us with a broad range of services necessary to daily life. These workers include public school teachers, fire and police, emergency medical technicians, park rangers, nurses just to name a few. As public employees, these people work for local and state government and they are compensated by us for their services through the taxes we pay. In general, these are modestly paid workers who also receive pensions when they retire after many years of work. Following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, government retirement trust funds significantly lost value and their long-term …