Law Commons^™

The Fire Next Time: Land Use Planning In The Wildland/Urban Interface, Jamison E. Colburn

Jamison E. Colburn

Wildfire is a growing threat to suburban and exurban communities, in part because fires have grown more severe and frequent as a result of land use and climatic influences and in part because more people are living in fire prone areas. The so-called Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), the federal government’s response to this crisis, is a deeply flawed statute that will likely exacerbate wildfire risks at the same time it makes real ecological restoration even harder. While HFRA took halting, partial steps toward the integration of broad and small scale land use planning, it was clearly still the outgrowth …

A Study Of American Zoning Board Composition And Public Attitudes Toward Zoning Issues, Jerry L. Anderson, Aaron Brees, Emily Renninger

Jerry L. Anderson

The authors surveyed zoning boards in the over 100 of the largest U.S. cities to determine the occupational composition of board members. It comes as no surprise that the boards are overwhelming populated with white-collar citizens, with business owners and real estate development the most prevalent occupations represented. The authors then conducted a survey of citizens to determine whether this skewed board composition makes any difference to the decision-making process. The study concludes that the composition of the board does matter, but not always in ways one might predict.

Wrongly Accused Redux: How Race Contributes To Convicting The Innocent: The Informants Example, Andrew E. Taslitz

Andrew E. Taslitz

This article analyzes five forces that may raise the risk of convicting the innocent based upon the suspect's race: the selection, ratchet, procedural justice, bystanders, and aggressive-suspicion effects. In other words, subconscious forces press police to focus more attention on racial minorites, the ratchet makes this focus every-increasing, the resulting sense by the community of unfair treatment raises its involvment in crime while lowering its willingness to aid the police in resisting crime, innocent persons suffer when their skin color becomes associated with criminality, and the police use more aggressive techniques on racial minorities in a way that raises the …

Why Pedestrian-Friendly Street Design Is Not Negligent, Michael E. Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

American streets are typically designed for fast automobile traffic. As a result, those streets are often dangerous for pedestrians.

In part, the anti-pedestrian design of American streets is a result of transportation planners' perceptions of American tort law. In negligent street design cases, courts and juries sometimes rely upon guidelines set by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), a national association of government transportation officials. Because AASHTO's street-design rules have historically favored wide streets built to accommodate high-speed traffic, planners sometimes assume that in order to avoid liability, they must do the same.

The purpose of …

Cascading Infrastructure Failures: Avoidance And Response, George H. Baker, Cheryl J. Elliott

George H Baker

No critical infrastructure is self-sufficient. The complexity inherent in the interdependent nature of infrastructure systems complicates planning and preparedness for system failures. Recent wide-scale disruption of infrastructure on the Gulf Coast due to weather, and in the Northeast due to electric power network failures, dramatically illustrate the problems associated with mitigating cascading effects and responding to cascading infrastructure failures once they have occurred.

The major challenge associated with preparedness for cascading failures is that they transcend system, corporate, and political boundaries and necessitate coordination among multiple, disparate experts and authorities. This symposium brought together concerned communities including government and industry …