Law Commons^™

Tending Gardens, Ploughing Fields, And The Unexamined Drift To Constructive Takings At Common Law, Douglas C. Harris

All Faculty Publications

Expropriation law in Canada has operated on the basis of two presumptions at common law: that compensation is owing for the compulsory acquisition of property unless specifically indicated otherwise by statute; and, that no compensation is owing for land use regulation unless specifically provided for by statute. In its decision in Annapolis Group Inc. v Halifax Regional Municipality, the Supreme Court of Canada abandoned the second presumption that compensation for land use regulation required a statutory foundation. The majority and dissent proceed on the unexamined foundation that there is a common law basis for compensation in claims for constructive takings …

Property Transitions, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Time plays a key role in this book. The last two chapters discussed two reasons why time matters to the life of property: over time, owners effect voluntary changes to property in order to carry out their life plans and the state imposes involuntary changes (from the individual owner’s perspective) in response to changing circumstances, shifting needs and wants, and revised public goals. For the state to function – and to remain justified on liberal principles – the government must have this ability to adjust ownership. However, state-initiated transitions to ownership – implemented through governments’ police and takings powers – …

Taking It Too Far: Growth Management And The Limits To Land-Use Regulation In Maine, Michael A. Duddy

Maine Law Review

In 1989 Maine enacted the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act. The Act's legislative findings declared that “ the State has a vital interest in ensuring that a comprehensive system of land-use planning and growth management is established as quickly as possible.” However, whenever the state exercises its police power to regulate private land use, it faces a constitutional limit as to how far it can go. When the land-use restriction exceeds that limit, a regulatory taking occurs. This Comment argues that the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act, as it is being interpreted and implemented by state …

Taking It Too Far: Growth Management And The Limits To Land-Use Regulation In Maine, Michael A. Duddy

Maine Law Review

In 1989 Maine enacted the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act. The Act's legislative findings declared that “ the State has a vital interest in ensuring that a comprehensive system of land-use planning and growth management is established as quickly as possible.” However, whenever the state exercises its police power to regulate private land use, it faces a constitutional limit as to how far it can go. When the land-use restriction exceeds that limit, a regulatory taking occurs. This Comment argues that the Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act, as it is being interpreted and implemented by state …

The State Of Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the Supreme Court slightly expanded the range of circumstances involving conditional land use permits 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 …

Property-As-Society, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

Modern regulatory takings disputes present a key battleground for competing conceptions of property. This Article offers the following account of the three leading theories: a libertarian view sees property as creating a sphere of individual freedom and control (property-as-liberty); a pecuniary view sees property as a tool of economic investment (property-as-investment); and a progressive view sees property as serving a wide range of evolving communal values that include, but are not limited to, those advanced under both the libertarian and pecuniary conceptions (property-as-society). Against this backdrop, the Article offers two contentions. First, on normative grounds, it asserts that the conception …

Property-As-Society, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

Modern regulatory takings disputes present a key battleground for competing conceptions of property. This Article offers the following account of the three leading theories: a libertarian view sees property as creating a sphere of individual freedom and control (property-as-liberty); a pecuniary view sees property as a tool of economic investment (property-as-investment); and a progressive view sees property as serving a wide range of evolving communal values that include, but are not limited to, those advanced under both the libertarian and pecuniary conceptions (property-as-society). Against this backdrop, the Article offers two contentions. First, on normative grounds, it asserts that the conception …

Murr And Wisconsin: The Badger State's Take On Regulatory Takings

Marquette Law Review

None.

Non-Enforcement Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The non-enforcement of existing property laws is not logically separable from the issue of unfair and unjust state deprivations of property rights at which the Constitution's Takings Clause takes aim. This Article suggests, therefore, that takings law should police allocations resulting from non-enforcement decisions on the same "fairness and justice" grounds that it polices allocations resulting from decisions to enact and enforce new regulations. Rejecting the extant majority position that state decisions not to enforce existing property laws are categorically immune from takings liability is not to advocate that persons impacted by such decisions should be automatically or even regularly …

Murr-Ky Waters: How Murr V. Wisconsin Creates Uncertainty In Attempting To Answer The “Denominator Question”, Charles M. Kassir

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Florida Rock Industries, Inc. V. United States: Tipping The Scales In Favor Of Private Property Rights At The Public's Expense, Susan E. Spokes University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Review

In Florida Rock Industries, Inc. v. United States the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the denial of a federal wetlands permit under section 1344 of the Clean Water Act may constitute a compensable taking of private property under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The court remanded the case to the Federal Court of Claims to determine the value of the property remaining after the permit denial, while warning the trial court that the existing record did not support a finding of the loss of all economically viable use of the property. The Federal …

The Law Of Taking Elsewhere And, One Suspects, In Maine, Orlando E. Delogu

Maine Law Review

The debate as to the meaning of the Taking Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution seems unending. This short, almost cryptic constitutional provision, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has over the years given rise to both court challenges and philosophic debate aimed at parsing out the meaning and parameters of this language. As the need for regulatory controls (imposed by every level of government) has increased, the number of challenges and the stridency of the debate has also increased. Moreover, these challenges have increasingly found their way to the …

Taking Back Bitcoin, Zachary Segal

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Non-Enforcement Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

The non-enforcement of existing property laws is not logically separable from the issue of unfair and unjust state deprivations of property rights at which the Constitution's Takings Clause takes aim. This Article suggests, therefore, that takings law should police allocations resulting from non-enforcement decisions on the same "fairness and justice" grounds that it polices allocations resulting from decisions to enact and enforce new regulations. Rejecting the extant majority position that state decisions not to enforce existing property laws are categorically immune from takings liability is not to advocate that persons impacted by such decisions should be automatically or even regularly …

Federalism, Convergence, And Divergence In Constitutional Property, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

Federal law exerts a gravitational force on state actors, resulting in widespread conformity to federal law and doctrine at the state level. This has been well recognized in the literature, but scholars have paid little attention to this phenomenon in the context of constitutional property. Traditionally, state takings jurisprudence—in both eminent domain and regulatory takings—has strongly gravitated towards the Supreme Court’s takings doctrine. This long history of federal-state convergence, however, was disrupted by the Court’s controversial public use decision in Kelo v. City of New London. In the wake of Kelo, states resisted the Court’s validation of the …

Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. V. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency: The Reemergence Of Penn Central And A Healthy Reluctance To Craft Per Se Regulatory Takings Rules, Philip R. Saucier

Maine Law Review

In Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Supreme Court held that a moratorium on development imposed during the process of devising a comprehensive land use plan did not constitute a per se taking of property requiring compensation under the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution. The scope of Tahoe-Sierra, and thus its ultimate impact on Supreme Court takings jurisprudence, had been severely narrowed and redefined by the courts since the landowners first alleged a taking over fifteen years before the issue was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. It is important to note that this …

Insuring Takings Claims, Christopher Serkin

Christopher Serkin

Local governments typically insure themselves against all kinds of losses, from property damage to legal liability. For small- and medium-sized governments, this usually means purchasing insurance from private insurers or participating in municipal risk pools. Insurance for regulatory takings claims, however, is generally unavailable. This previously unnoticed gap in municipal insurance coverage could lead risk averse local governments to underregulate and underenforce existing regulations where property owners threaten to bring takings claims. This seemingly technical observation turns out to have profound implications for theoretical accounts of the Takings Clause that focus on government regulatory incentives. This Article explores the impact …

The Illusion Of Fiscal Illusion In Regulatory Takings, Bethany R. Berger

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Scalia's Rule Of Law And Law Of Takings, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This short essay reviews the regulatory takings legacy of Justice Antonin Scalia, evaluating both its impact on the Supreme Court's takings canon and its consistency with his stated jurisprudential principles.

Insuring Takings Claims, Christopher Serkin

Northwestern University Law Review

Local governments typically insure themselves against all kinds of losses, from property damage to legal liability. For small- and medium-sized governments, this usually means purchasing insurance from private insurers or participating in municipal risk pools. Insurance for regulatory takings claims, however, is generally unavailable. This previously unnoticed gap in municipal insurance coverage could lead risk averse local governments to underregulate and underenforce existing regulations where property owners threaten to bring takings claims. This seemingly technical observation turns out to have profound implications for theoretical accounts of the Takings Clause that focus on government regulatory incentives. This Article explores the impact …

The New Nuisance: An Antidote To Wetland Loss, Sprawl, And Global Warming, Christine A. Klein

Christine A. Klein

Marking the fifteenth anniversary of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council -- the modern U.S. Supreme Court's seminal regulatory takings decision -- this Article surveys Lucas's impact upon regulations that restrict wetland filling, sprawling development, and the emission of greenhouse gases. The Lucas Court set forth a new categorical rule of governmental liability for regulations that prohibit all economically beneficial use of land, but also established a new defense that draws upon the states' common law of nuisance and property. Unexpectedly, that defense has taken on a life of its own -- forming what this Article calls the new …

California Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Inclusionary Zoning As Land Use Regulation And Not An Exaction, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Local governments, housing advocates, and people who need affordable housing won a solid victory in the California Supreme Court's unanimous opinion in California Bldg. Indus. Ass'n v. City of San Jose. In a complex 64-page opinion that is clearly drafted and rigorously argued, the court held that inclusionary zoning is a constitutionally permissible strategy to produce affordable housing and to promote economic integration that is subject to rational basis review and not heightened scrutiny.

This article outlines the factual and legal background of the case and discusses the court's reasoning in reaching its decision, including the court's refusal to find …

Ten Years Of Takings, Gregory Alexander

Gregory S Alexander

No area of property law has been more controversial in the past decade than takings. No aspect of constitutional law more sharply poses the dilemma about the legitimate powers of the regulatory state than the just compensation question. No question concerning constitutional property is more intractable than what sorts of government regulatory actions constitute uncompensated "takings" of private property. Limitations of space, not to mention my own ambivalence about many of the issues, prevent me from developing a complete normative theory of the proper scope of the Takings Clause. My aim here is vastly more modest: to outline the basic …

The Brooding Omnipresence Of Regulatory Takings: Urban Origins And Effects, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

This essay, written on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, discusses the urban settings for key regulatory takings decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, reviews the state of expert commentary before the rebirth of regulatory takings in the high court, explores the complex relationship between liberal justices and private property rights protection, reviews regulatory takings scholarship that has appeared in the pages of this journal, and closes with some thoughts about the future of urban regulatory takings

Strategies For Making Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Tools 'Takings-Proof', Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

While the costs of some Sea-Level Rise (SLR) adaptation tools are undeniably daunting, the American legal system poses an additional, potentially budget-busting impediment — the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Officials at all governmental strata and from all three branches should keep the demands made by the Takings Clause, as interpreted by the judiciary, in mind as they choose tools from the diverse SLR-adaptation toolbox, as they justify their choices to the electorate and other constituencies, as they put those tools to use, and as they defend that use from litigants claiming abuse. This …

Exactions Creep, Lee Anne Fennell, Eduardo M. PeñAlver

Eduardo M. Peñalver

The published version of this article is available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1409/. How can the Constitution protect landowners from government exploitation without disabling the machinery that protects landowners from each other? The Supreme Court left this central question unanswered — and indeed unasked — in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District. The Court’s exactions jurisprudence, set forth in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, Dolan v. City of Tigard, and now Koontz, requires the government to satisfy demanding criteria for certain bargains — or proposed bargains — implicating the use of land. Yet because virtually every restriction, fee, or tax associated …

Substantive Due Process By Another Name: Koontz, Exactions, And The Regulatory Takings Doctrine, Mark Fenster

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cambria's Water War: Legal Analysis Of The Building Moratorium And Its Implications For Land Owners, Jayson Parsons

Political Science

With each passing year, Cambria, California's building moratorium becomes increasingly controversial. The moratorium, enacted by the local community services district in 1986 due to a series of water shortages, has resulted in nearly 43% of all property owners under the district's purview to be denied the ability to develop their parcels. This paper seeks to examine the constitutionality of this moratorium using relevant regulatory takings jurisprudence.

Reviewing United States Supreme Court precedent, including Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon (1922), Penn Central Transport v. New York City (1978), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992), and Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council …

The Environmental Limitations To Property Rights In Brazil And The United States Of America, Leonardo Munhoz

Dissertations & Theses

This thesis aims to comparatively analyze the legislative evolution that environmental protection has experienced in the Brazilian versus the American legal systems and their relationship with property rights.

Demonstrably, Brazil’s concern with the environment actually came into focus in the 1980s and it therefore received treatment within the Federal Constitution of 1988, as a diffuse right, contributing to better, stronger environmental protection.

Similarly, the protection of the environment in the American Constitution and its statutes as well as their enforcement and interpretation within the legal system are explored.

Of concern is the notion that environmental protection and third-generation rights consequently …

Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier

Articles

Judicial takings weren’t much talked about until a few years ago, when the Stop the Beach case made them suddenly salient. The case arose from a Florida statute, enacted in 1961, that authorizes public restoration of eroded beaches by adding sand to widen them seaward. Under the statute, the state has title to any new dry land resulting from restored beaches, meaning that waterfront owners whose land had previously extended to the mean high-tide line end up with public beaches between their land and the water. This, the owners claimed, resulted in a taking of their property, more particularly their …