Law Commons^™

Spousal Reimbursement Rights: Marriage Of Cochran, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a California case which held that on dissolution of marriage a spouse is entitled to reimbursement for payment of 1) a fee required for family home building permit, and 2) construction loan consideration, both paid from separate property.

Sold Out Juniors On The Same Property: National Enters. V Woods, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a California case which held that after a creditor holding senior and junior loans on the same property sells them to independent parties, the one action rule does not bar the sold-out junior’s suit for a deficiency following the senior’s judicial foreclosure.

Takings And The Notice Defense: Palazzolo V Rhode Island, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a Supreme Court case which held that a takings claim challenging land use regulation restricting development of property is permissible even though a landowner had notice of the regulation when title was acquired.

The Buyer’S Measure Of Damages For A Seller’S Breach: Reese V Wong, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a California case which held that the buyer’s measure of damages for a seller’s breach of contract is the difference between the contract price and the fair market value at the time of the breach, not at the time of trial.

The Home Equity Sales Contract Act And Vacant Property: In Re Phelps, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a case which the court held that the California Home Equity Sales Contract Act does not apply when the homeowner does not reside in the home sold.

The Real Estate Recovery Fund: Stewart Title Guar. Co. V Park, 2001, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article discusses a California case which held that the protection of California’s Real Estate Recovery Fund was limited to members of the public and did not include title insurance companies”

On Insider Trading, Markets, And "Negative" Property Rights In Information, Zohar Goshen, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers one of the primary ways in which African Americans have lost millions of acres of land that they were able to acquire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning part of the twentieth century and the sociopolitical implications of this land loss. Specifically, this article highlights the fact that forced partition sales of tenancy in common property, referred to more commonly as heirs' property, have been a major source of black land loss within the African American community. The article argues that involuntary black land loss has had a significant negative impact upon …

The Emergence Of Private Land-Use Controls In Large-Scale Subdivisions: The Companion Story To Village Of Euclid V. Ambler Realty Co., Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline – there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the …

The Uneasy Case For Adverse Possession, Jeffrey E. Stake

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Property Rights And Competition On The Internet: In Search Of An Appropriate Analogy, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Reasoning by analogy is a time-honored method of legal development. However, recent litigation exposes the weakness of applying legal principles developed in the "bricks and mortar" world by analogy to cyberspace. Using recent court decisions that discuss who may access a website and by what means, this Article illustrates how results can change depending on the analogy the court adopts. The Article argues that rather than searching for analogies, courts and legislators could more profitably devote their energies to understanding how the Internet differs from physical space, evaluating whether those differences call for new legal rules, and considering the conflicting …

The Property/Contract Interface, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the distinction between in personam contract rights and in rem property rights. It presents a functional explanation for why the legal system utilizes these two modalities of rights, grounded in the pattern of information costs associated with each modality. To test this theory, the Article examines four legal institutions that fall along the property/contract interface – bailments, landlord-tenant law, security interests, and trusts – in order to determine how the legal doctrine varies as the underlying situation shifts from in personam, to in rem, to certain relations intermediate between these poles. With respect to each institution, we …

What's My Copy Right?, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This piece consists of an early 21st century whimsy, a dialogue that borrows and blends history and humor to illustrate some puzzles of copyright law in the context of digital technology (with references to Folsom v. Marsh and Abbott & Costello).

A Primer On The Sale Of Residence Tax Rules After The Proposed Regulations, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

No abstract provided.

Givings, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Givings - government acts that enhance property value - are omnipresent. Givings and takings are mirror images of one another, and of equal practical and theoretical importance, but the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment has enabled takings to dominate scholarly attention. This Article makes the first step toward rectifying this disparate treatment by laying the foundation for a law of givings. The Article identifies three prototype givings: physical givings, regulatory givings and derivative givings. The Article shows that givings are a formative force in property, and that a comprehensive takings jurisprudence cannot be devised without an attendant understanding of …

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. …

Takings Reassessed, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we challenge the conventional typology of constitutional takings by bringing to light a previously unrecognized type of taking-the derivative taking. We show that virtually every exercise of the power of takings generates derivative takings that have largely evaded takings scholars. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the failure of existing takings doctrine to account for derivative takings leads to inefficient and inequitable results. In particular, this failure disproportionately harms the poor. To remedy this problem, we craft an economic model of self-assessment to optimize constitutional protection at low administrative cost. Importantly, our self-assessment mechanism incentivizes property owners to report …

Chinese Mortgage Law: An American Perspective, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

My objective in this paper is to compare and to evaluate some of the features of the American and Chinese systems. I do so without any preconception that the American system provides better answers, but with the recognition that it is far more mature and provides more answers. Hence it provides a reference point from which the Chinese system can be considered. Perhaps each system has something to teach the other.

The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Impact On Lending In Low-Income Communities In The United States, Michael S. Barr, Lynda Y. De La Vina, Valerie A. Personick, Melissa A. Schroder

Book Chapters

This paper reviews data and research studies that demonstrate that CRA has helped to increase lending to low-income borrowers and in low-income neighborhoods, and that expanded CRA lending has been accomplished while maintaining sound lending practices and bank profitability. The paper also discusses literature that draws alternative conclusions, as well as studies that find, despite increases in lending and banking services to low- and moderate-income areas and to minority borrowers, that disparities still exist between the services afforded to these communities and those offered to the market as a whole.

A Property Theory Perspective On Russian Enterprise Reform, Michael Heller

Book Chapters

Why have Russian enterprises performed so poorly since privatization? This is a problem with many answers, each independently sufficient: the bleak mix includes vacillating macroeconomic policy, endemic corruption, a corrosive tax structure, poor human capital, and so forth. Even well-performing companies must hide good results because visible profits or dividends provoke confiscatory taxation and mafia visits. In such a difficult environment, the rule of law generally, and corporate governance in particular, may seem not to count. Macroeconomic implosions dwarf subtle distinctions in corporate dividend rules or minority voting rights.

The Liberal Commons, Hanoch Dagan, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Following the Civil War, black Americans began acquiring land in earnest; by 1920 almost one million black families owned farms. Since then, black rural landownership has dropped by more than 98% and continues in rapid decline-there are now fewer than 19,000 black-operated farms left in America. By contrast, white-operated farms dropped only by half, from about 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Commentators have offered as partial explanations the consolidation of inefficient small farms and intense racial discrimination in farm lending. However, even absent these factors, the unintended effects of old-fashioned American property law might have led to the same outcome. …

The Dynamic Analytics Of Property Law, Michael A. Heller

Articles

The standard property trilogy of private, commons, and state has become so outdated that it now impedes imagination and innovation at the frontiers of ownership. This essay suggests two approaches - creating new ideal types and synthesizing existing ones - that may help update our static property metaphors. Using these dynamic approaches to property analytics, legal theory can move beyond polarizing oppositions that have made jurisprudential debates unsolvable and rendered concrete problems invisible.

The Rise Of Dispersed Ownership: The Roles Of Law And The State In The Separation Of Ownership And Control, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Recent scholarship on comparative corporate governance has produced a puzzle. While Berle and Means had assumed that all large public corporations would mature to an end-stage capital structure characterized by the separation of ownership and control, the contemporary empirical evidence is decidedly to the contrary. Instead of convergence toward a single capital structure, the twentieth century saw the polarization of corporate structure between two rival systems of corporate governance:

1. A Dispersed Ownership System, characterized by strong securities markets, rigorous disclosure standards, and high market transparency, in which the market for corporate control constitutes the ultimate disciplinary mechanism; and
2. A …

What Happened To Property In Law And Economics?, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

Property has fallen out of fashion. Although people are as concerned as ever with acquiring and defending their material possessions, in the academic world there is little interest in understanding property. To some extent, this indifference reflects a more general skepticism about the value of conceptual analysis, as opposed to functional assessment of institutions. There is, however, a deeper reason for the indifference to property. It is a commonplace of academic discourse that property is simply a "bundle of rights," and that any distribution of rights and privileges among persons with respect to things can be dignified with the (almost …

Moral Nuisances, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

Nuisance law provides a remedy for activities that substantially interfere with the use and enjoyment of one's land. Most nuisance cases today involve environmental pollution or unwanted noises, sights, or smells. Historically, though, nuisance law had a much broader application that regulated brothels, saloons, and gambling parlors - what I call moral nuisances.

I articulate a theory of moral nuisances that applies when (1) a substantial and legally cognizable interference with a landowner's use or enjoyment of his or her land is caused by (2) an action that is regarded as immoral by a reasonable person within the community (3) …

State Escheat Statutes And Possible Treatment Of Stored Value, Electronic Currency, And Other New Payment Mechanisms, Anita Ramasastry

Articles

Unclaimed property and escheatment is governed primarily by state statutory schemes. State unclaimed property statues require that after a specified period of time, unclaimed and abandoned property escheats to the states. The owner of the property may request return of the property upon proof of his or her ownership. Although several states have adopted the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act as their state escheatment statute,' there are variations in these state statutes. Nonetheless, all state statutes deal with traveler's checks and money orders; most also address gift certificates. Notably absent in all of the state statutes, with the exception of North …