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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Law
A Prudential Take On A Prudential Takings Doctrine, Katherine Mims Crocker
A Prudential Take On A Prudential Takings Doctrine, Katherine Mims Crocker
Michigan Law Review Online
The Supreme Court is set to decide a case requesting reconsideration of a doctrine that has long bedeviled constitutional litigants and commentators. The case is Knick v. Township of Scott, and the doctrine is the “ripeness” rule from Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank that plaintiffs seeking to raise takings claims under the Fifth Amendment must pursue state-created remedies first—the so-called “compensation prong” (as distinguished from a separate “takings prong”). This Essay argues that to put the compensation prong in the best light possible, the Court should view the requirement as a “prudential” rule rather than (as it …
An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk
An Empirical Study Of Implicit Takings., James E. Krier, Stewart E. Sterk
Articles
Takings scholarship has long focused on the niceties of Supreme Court doctrine, while ignoring the operation of takings law "on the ground" in the state and lower federal courts, which together decide the vast bulk of all takings cases. This study, based primarily on an empirical analysis of more than 2000 reported decisions ovcr the period 1979 through 2012, attempts to fill that void. This study establishes that the Supreme Court's categorical rules govern almost no state takings cases, and that takings claims based on government regulation almost invariably fail. By contrast, when takings claims arise out of government action …
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Michigan Law Review
Takings law has long contained a puzzle. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay “just compensation” to owners of private property that the government “takes.” In ordinary circumstances, this requirement applies equally whether the property is confiscated or destroyed, and it also applies to property confiscated in emergencies. Remarkably, however, courts have repeatedly held that if the government destroys property to address an emergency, then a “necessity exception” relieves the government of any obligation to compensate the owner of the property that was sacrificed for the public good. Although the roots of this startling principle …
Passive Takings: The State's Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin
Passive Takings: The State's Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin
Michigan Law Review
The purpose of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause is to protect property owners from the most significant costs of legal transitions. Paradigmatically, a regulatory taking involves a government action that interferes with expectations about the content of property rights. Legal change has therefore always been central to regulatory takings claims. This Article argues that it does not need to be and that governments can violate the Takings Clause by failing to act in the face of a changing world. This argument represents much more than a minor refinement of takings law because recognizing governmental liability for failing to act means …
Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier
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 …
Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson
Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
Like many cities in the United States, Richmond, California suffered greatly from the recent mortgage crisis. The foreclosure crisis hit Richmond hard in 2009, when more than 2,000 homes in Richmond went into foreclosure. This figure is especially shocking given that there were 18,659 owner-occupied housing units in the city at that time. In 2012, the city saw an additional 914 foreclosures and a foreclosure rate of thirty out of 1,000 homes (well above the national average of thirteen of every 1,000 homes). Today, it is reported that nearly forty-six percent of homes in Richmond are “underwater,” meaning that what …
Public Use, Public Choice, And The Urban Growth Machine: Competing Political Economies Of Takings Law, Daniel A. Lyons
Public Use, Public Choice, And The Urban Growth Machine: Competing Political Economies Of Takings Law, Daniel A. Lyons
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The Kelo decision has unleashed a tidal wave of legislative reforms ostensibly seeking to control eminent domain abuse. But as a policy matter, it is impossible to determine what limits should be placed upon local government without understanding how cities grow and develop, and how local governments make decisions to shape the communities over which they preside. This Article examines takings through two very different models of urban political economy: public choice theory and the quasi-Marxist Urban Growth Machine model. These models approach takings from diametrically opposite perspectives, and offer differing perspectives at the margin regarding proper and improper condemnations. …
Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin
Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin
Articles
The public use requirement of eminent domain law may be working its way back into the United States Constitution. To be sure, the words "public use" appear in the document-and in many state constitutions as well, but the federal provision applies to the states in any event-as one of the Fifth Amendment's limitations on the government's inherent power to take private property against the will of its owners. (The other limitation is that "just compensation" must be paid, of which more later.) Any taking of private property, the text suggests, must be for public use. Those words, however, have amounted …
Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Articles
The law of takings couples together matters that should be treated independently. The conventional view, shared by courts and commentators alike, has been that any takings case can be resolved in one of two ways: either there is a taking and compensation is due, or there is no taking and no compensation is due. These results are fine as long as one holding or the other serves the two central concerns of the Takings Clause - eficiency and justice. But a problem arises when the two purposes behind the law of takings come into cordhct, as they readily might. It …
Making Something Out Of Nothing: The Law Of Takings And Phillips V. Washington Legal Foundation, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Making Something Out Of Nothing: The Law Of Takings And Phillips V. Washington Legal Foundation, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Articles
Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation held that interest on principal amounts deposited into IOLTA accounts is the property of the various clients who handed over the money but expressed no view as to whether the Texas IOLTA program worked a taking, or, if it did, whether any compensation was due. The debates among the justices about the meaning of private property, argued in terms of contextual and conceptual severance, are unlikely to prove fruitful. We elaborate a better approach in terms of the underlying purposes of just compensation. We conclude that efficiency and justice are best served by uncoupling matters …
The Boundaries Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller
The Boundaries Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller
Articles
If your house and fields are worth more separately, divide them; if you want to leave a ring to your child now and grandchild later, split the ownership in a trust. The American law of property encourages owners to subdivide resources freely. Hidden within the law, however, is a boundary principle that limits the right to subdivide private property into wasteful fragments. While people often create wealth when they break up and recombine property in novel ways, owners may make mistakes, or their self-interest may clash with social welfare. Property law responds with diverse doctrines that prevent and abolish excessive …
Deterrence And Distribution In The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Deterrence And Distribution In The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier
Articles
Supreme Court decisions over the last three-quarters of a century have turned the words of the Takings Clause into a secret code that only a momentary majority of the Court is able to understand. The Justices faithfully moor their opinions to the particular terms of the Fifth Amendment, but only by stretching the text beyond recognition. A better approach is to consider the purposes of the Takings Clause, efficiency and justice, and go anew from there. Such a method reveals that in some cases there are good reasons to require payment by the government when it regulates property, but not …
The Takings-Puzzle Puzzle, James E. Krier
The Takings-Puzzle Puzzle, James E. Krier
Articles
My aim here is to unpack the regulatory takings problem in a way that suggests why it is intractable. The idea is to reveal some of the different types of ambiguity necessarily entailed in takings cases. Seeing these ambiguities, we readily can understand why the doctrine in this area is so confused and confusing; why there is, in short, a "takings puzzle." To my mind, it is much more difficult to understand why anyone would expect matters to be otherwise. This oddity I call the "takings-puzzle puzzle."
Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein
Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein
Michigan Law Review
A Review of William A. Fischel, Regulatory Takings: Law, Economics, and Politics
A Critical Reexamination Of The Takings Jurisprudence, Glynn S. Lunney Jr
A Critical Reexamination Of The Takings Jurisprudence, Glynn S. Lunney Jr
Michigan Law Review
To provide some insight into the nature of these disagreements, and to suggest a possible solution to the compensation issue, this article undertakes a critical reexamination of the takings jurisprudence. It focuses on the two bases which the modem Court has articulated as support for its resolution of the compensation issue: (1) the articulated purpose of using the just compensation requirement "to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens"; and (2) the early case law. Beginning with the Court's first struggles with the compensation issue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this article traces …
Taking Of Equitable Easements For Public Use, Edgar N. Durfee
Taking Of Equitable Easements For Public Use, Edgar N. Durfee
Articles
The case of Flynn v. New York &c Railway Co., decided by the Court of Appeals of New York in April last, involves the right of an owner of land to which is appurtenant a so-called equitable easement, arising under a covenant restricting the use of other land, to compensation upon the taking of the servient land for a public use inconsistent with the restriction. A tract of land was laid out in accordance with a plan, and all, lots therein were sold and conveyed by deeds containing covenants, inter alia, that, "No building or structure for any business purpose …