Law Commons^™

Natural Law, Assumptions, And Humility, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This review of Natural Property Rights celebrates Eric Claeys’s efforts to resuscitate natural law as a viable approach to property law. Although readers unlikely to be convinced that natural law is the way to best understand property rights, Claeys succeeds in breathing new life into natural law. Natural Property Rights’ emphasis on use as property law’s fundamental value creates space to reconceptualize the rights of property owners and the place of non-owners within a just theory of property rights. The main critiques of Natural Property Rights offered in this review center around the choice to prioritize rights over duties and …

Navajo Statehood: From Domestic Dependent Nation To 51st State, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Supreme Court’s recent holding in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta that “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the State” is a reminder of tribal sovereignty’s precarious foundation under U.S. law. The Court’s holding not only broke with longstanding precedent regarding the relationship between tribes and states, but it is also incompatible with the lived experience of those living in the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation, not the states and not the federal government, has primary responsibility for governing an area roughly the size of West Virginia. Yet most maps of the United States demarcate only state boundaries, …

Corporate Consolidation Of Rental Housing & The Case For National Rent Stabilization, Brandon Weiss

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Rental housing in the United States is increasingly owned by corporate landlords that operate under a different set of incentives, behind a level of anonymity previously unavailable, and pursuant to practices that often exacerbate an already precarious housing landscape for tenants. Marketsensitive and nuanced rent stabilization laws have reemerged at the state and local level as a viable policy option to help regulate escalating rents and prevent tenant displacement. These laws, when well drafted, can address outdated critiques of strict rent caps and can complement alternative approaches, like those of the politically popular Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, which …

State Interventions In Local Zoning, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In what has been described as an "emerging consensus" and pejoratively labeled an "elite liberaltarian consensus," there is growing scholarly recognition that land use overregulation is hurting the country by limiting the supply and increasing the price of housing. By highlighting state-level interventions that succeeded in checking local zoning authority, Professor Anika Lemar's article makes a valuable contribution to the fight against excessive zoning limitations.

Shelter Mobility, And The Voucher Program, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

What is to be done about the poor and about poor neighborhoods? When it comes to housing policy, the current hope is that the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly the Section 8 Voucher Program) can provide an or ambitiously the answer to this perennial societal question. By piggybacking on the private rental market, the voucher program supposedly has numerous advantages over traditional, project-based, public housing. Not only is it less costly to house poor people in privately owned units compared to the cost of constructing and maintaining public housing, but the voucher program also offers the possibility of deconcentrating the …

Reclaiming Place-Based Development Incentive, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Professor Michelle Layser's forthcoming article is an attack on the current form of place-based tax incentive programs. Layser argues that while rhetorically such programs are said to help the poor, by design they support gentrification in ways that harm the poor. The article ends with a call to reform place-based incentive programs so that the poor in selected areas actually benefit.

Reclaiming State Authority Over Zoning Property, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In 2019, Oregon became the first state to pass legislation that essentially bans single-family zoning.' As states across the country struggle to respond to the housing affordability crisis, Oregon's actions do not stand alone. John Infranca's recent article, The New State Zoning: Land Use Preemption Amid a Housing Crisis, may have been published before Oregon's historic vote but it is essential reading for those interested in the future of zoning.

Federal Courts And The Poor: Lack Of Standards And Uniformity In Civil In Forma Pauperis Pleadings, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Andrew Hammond's article, Pleading Poverty in Federal Court, shows that there is considerable variation in how federal courts consider requests by the poor for fee waivers in civil litigation. Courts not only use different forms to collect ability-to-pay information but they also apply different standards when determining whether fees should be waived. By focusing attention on federal court in forma pauperis motion practices, Hammond's article sheds light on how the poor can be negatively impacted by routine court practices that might ordinarily be treated as merely administrative. Hammond makes a convincing argument that federal courts should have uniform standards for …

Reclaiming The Navajo Range: Resolving The Conflict Between Grazing Rights And Development, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Grazing is fundamental to Navajo identity, yet management of the Navajo range remains highly problematic. This Essay connects the federal government's devastating livestock reduction effort of the 1930s with the inability of the Navajo Nation to place meaningful limits on grazing and the power of grazing permittees. It argues that the Navajo Nation should consider reasserting the tribe's traditional understanding that property rights depend on use as a way to create space for reservation development.

Property, Race, Segregation, And The State Property, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Property scholars have neither forgotten nor ignored the government's role in creating and furthering racial segregation. Scholars have written extensive work on redlining, racially restrictive covenants, the siting of public housing in minority poor communities and the resistance of wealthier white towns to affordable housing.

Nevertheless, Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law, should be required reading for property scholars and students. Beautifully written, the book is packed with new details and stories that illustrate the many ways government-at the local, state, and federal levels-denied African-Americans equal access to space and property.

Making A List And Checking It Twice, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Tribute To The Honorable Irma Raker Upon Her Retirement, Barlow Burke

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In this article the author pays tribute to Judge Raker’s pre-law school tour de force citizen testimony in Eger v. Stone, 253 A.2d 372 (Md. 1969), which established the standard for credibility of lay witnesses in zoning cases, acceptance of citizen testimony as establishing the basis for an application’s denial, and acceptance of hearsay in an administrative forum in Maryland.

Judge Raker was a student of the author, who taught a course in modern land law at the Washington College of Law during Judge Raker’s tenure in law school. The article discusses two of Judge Raker’s real estate transaction opinions, …

Lessons From The World Trade Center For Open Space Planning Generally And Boston's Big Data Specifically, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This paper looks to several land use planning issues at stake in both the World Trade Center redevelopment and Central Artery/ Tunnel Project, offering some lessons for the future of public open space planning with respect to the inºuence of the press, the centrality of politics, the urgency of addressing public and private claims of land ownership, the need to engage the public, and seizing the opportunity to create new public transportation links.

Roundtable With Former Directors Of The Bureau Of Economics, Jonathan Baker

Presentations

The roundtable commemorates the 100th anniversary of the FTC's predecessor agency, the Bureau of Corporations. It was sponsored by the FTC's Bureau of Economics (BE) and focused on BE history and contributions of BE and economic analysis to antitrust and consumer protection enforcement, and to research and economic knowledge and policy. BE was featured because the original functions of the Bureau of Corporations were to collect information, to conduct industry and policy research, to prepare reports at the request of the Congress and the President. The panelists for the roundtable consisted of former BE Directors and Acting Directors from the …

Administrative Law In The 21st Century, Andrew Popper

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Toward A Right Of Control Over The City Planning Process, Barlow Burke

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.