Law Commons^™

Property In Digital Coins, J.G. Allen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Digital coins have burst into mainstream awareness recently, mainly as a result of high-worth ‘Initial Coin Offerings’ (‘ICOs’). The most immediate question in the legal treatment of digital coins is whether they are properly seen as digital ‘commodities’, and/or as ‘securities’, and/or as units of ‘money’. But the conceptual underpinnings of these categories are not clear, nor is it clear how these categories relate to each other; no legal system currently deals adequately with incorporeal objects as objects of property law. This category includes not only digital coins but also some forms of conventional money and securities. Establishing a satisfactory …

Maralex Resources, Inc. V. Barnhardt, Bradley E. Tinker

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Maralex Resources v. Barnhardt, Maralex and property owners brought an action to protect private property from BLM inspections of oil and gas lease sites. The Tenth Circuit looked at the plain meaning of a congressional statute and held in favor of Maralex, finding that BLM lacked authority to require a private landowner to provide BLM with a key to inspect wells of their property. The Tenth Circuit held BLM has the authority to conduct inspections without prior notice on private property lease sites; however, it is required to contact the property owner for permission before entering the property.

Rights Of Creditors To Collect Marital Debts After Divorce In Community Property Jurisdictions, James L. Musselman

Pace Law Review

The primary thrust of this Article is to address the post-divorce liability issue outlined in Part III from the perspective of debtor-creditor law. The rules adopted in most of the community property jurisdictions with respect to this issue appear to be primarily focused on the perspective of marital property and family law without regard to general debtor-creditor law principles and policies. For example, basic fraudulent transfer law has been ignored in those jurisdictions and not applied in the usual manner. As a result, the rules developed in those jurisdictions with regard to the post-divorce liability issue are not consistent with …

Trying Times: Conservation Easements And Federal Tax Law (April 2019), Nancy Mclaughlin

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Since 2006, the Tax Court, District Courts, and Circuit Courts have collectively issued more than one-hundred decisions relating to the federal charitable income tax deduction for the donation of perpetual conservation easements. This outline discusses these court decisions and other developments in the conservation easement donation context. The outline was prepared for a May 3rd, 2019, program of the same name at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Presenters at the program were Nancy A. McLaughlin, Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law; Stephen J. Small, Attorney at Law, Law Office of Stephen …

Uncompensated Takings: Insurance, Efficiency, And Relational Justice, Brian Angelo Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Crime And Punishment In Gold Country : A Historical Case-Study, Shih-Chun Steven Chien, Lawrence M. Friedman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Rural life, small town life, is not and has never been idyllic. It has always had its share of pathology, sometimes deep pathology. Small town life is not necessarily traditional life, close-knit family life, neighborly life. That kind of life certainly exists; but America was never a traditional society in that sense. Its small towns were full of strangers. The population of El Dorado County, small as it was, had been growing rapidly. Like America in general, El Dorado County had its share of anomie; rootless men (and women), without strong relationships: ships without anchors, driftwood on the sea of …

Endangering Missouri’S Captive Cervid Industry, Lauren Hunter

Missouri Law Review

This Note seeks to explore the validity of regulations proposed by the Commission to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease (“CWD”) – a fatal neurodegenerative disease – in cervids, such as white-tailed deer. Part II discusses the facts and circumstances surrounding the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision in Hill v. Missouri Department of Conservation. Part III dissects the delicate balance between private property interests and government interests, the scope of the Commission’s regulatory authority, as well as the driving forces behind the “right-to-farm” amendment to the Missouri Constitution. Part IV unpacks the court’s reasoning in Hill before concluding with a …

Privacy Remedies, Lauren H. Scholz

Indiana Law Journal

When consumers sue companies for privacy-intrusive practices, they are often unsuccessful. Many cases fail in federal court at the motion to dismiss phase because the plaintiff has not shown the privacy infringement has caused her concrete harm. This is a symptom of a broader issue: the failure of courts and commentators to describe the relationship between privacy rights and privacy remedies.

This Article contends that restitution is the normal measure of privacy remedies. Restitution measures relief by economic gain to the defendant. If a plaintiff can show the likely ability to recover in restitution, that should be sufficient to pass …

Commercial-Property Leases As A Means For Private Environmental Governance, Darren A. Prum

Georgia State University Law Review

Commercial-property leases as a means for private environmental governance routinely get overlooked despite their noticeable presence. The applicable theoretical models used in environmental law and the standards that typically measure legal activity fail to detect the commercial-property lease as a regulatory action as well. Moreover, the public and positive law and policy approach of the past that heavily relied on administrative authority now follows more of a private law and governance approach. The private law and governance approach responds to the marketplace where standards are set, enforcement occurs, and dispute resolution takes place between parties involved in the transaction outside …

Afterlife Of The Death Tax, Samuel D. Brunson

Indiana Law Journal

More than a century ago, Congress enacted the modern estate tax to help pay for World War I. Unlike previous iterations of the estate tax, though, this one outlived the war and accumulated additional goals beyond merely raising revenue. The estate tax helped ensure the progressivity of the tax system as a whole, and it limited the hereditary ability to accumulate wealth.

This modern estate tax almost instantly met with opposition, though. The opposition has never been sufficient to entirely eliminate the estate tax, but it has severely weakened its ability to raise revenue and to prevent the accumulation of …

Legislative Reform Or Legalized Theft?: Why Civil Asset Forfeiture Must Be Outlawed In Ohio, Alex Haller

Cleveland State Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal method for law enforcement to deprive United States citizens of their personal property with little hope for its return. With varying degrees of legal protection at the state level, Ohio legislators must encourage national policy reform by outlawing civil asset forfeiture in Ohio. Ohio Revised Code Section 2981.05 should be amended to outlaw civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction prior to allowing the seizure of an individual’s property. This Note proposes two plans of action that will restore Ohio resident’s property rights back to those originally afforded in the United States Constitution.

Uncompensated Takings: Insurance, Efficiency, And Relational Justice, Brian Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Standing For Standing Rock?: Vindicating Native American Religious And Land Rights By Adapting New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act To American Soil, Malcolm Mcdermond

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

On February 23, 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) was forced to disband its nearly year-long protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened the integrity of its ancestral lands. The Tribe sought declaratory and injunctive relief in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, but the court ruled against the Tribe and failed to protect its interests. While the United States was forcibly removing Indigenous protesters, other countries were taking steps to protect Indigenous populations. In unprecedented legislative action, New Zealand took radical steps to protect the land and cultural rights of …

Law And Neighborhood Names, Nestor M. Davidson, David Fagundes

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article provides a novel investigation of how law both enables and constrains the ability of city residents to claim, name, and often rename their neighborhoods. A rich interdisciplinary dialogue in fields such as geography and sociology has emerged on the significance of place names, but this literature has largely ignored the legal dimensions of the phenomenon and its implications for urban governance, belonging, and community conflict. This Article's empirical exploration of the role of law in change and conflict regarding neighborhood identity thus advances the discourse both for legal scholars focused on urban dynamics and across disciplines.

From gentrification …

Residential Mortgage Default And The Constraints Of Junior Liens, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

Our purpose in this Article is to show how and why junior liens impose these constraints on the process of resolving residential mortgage loan defaults, and to suggest some changes in the law that can restore a measure of desirable flexibility for borrowers and servicers in negotiating default resolutions. At the same time, these suggestions take into account, as they must, the need for fairness in respecting the legitimate rights of junior lienholders.

Say What You Mean! How Arkansas Courts Are Contradicting The Default Rule Of Tenancy In Common, Joel Hutcheson

Arkansas Law Notes

In 2015, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled that a warranty deed with the grantees listed as “Herbert Love and Gloria Love” vested the property in a tenancy by the entirety. There was no language in the deed designating the grantees as a married couple, such as “husband and wife” or “tenants by the entirety.” In fact, the only way someone reading the deed would know that the grantees were married was that the grantees were also the grantors, where it listed them as husband and wife. The court made its decision by looking to precedent case law which states …

Conserving A Vision: Acadia, Katahdin, And The Pathway From Private Lands To Park Lands, Sean Flaherty, Anthony L. Moffa

Maine Law Review

Although a century separates the official designations, the strategies required to ensure federal protection of Maine’s two National Park Service areas—Acadia National Park and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument—closely track one another. In both cases, a handful of enterprising conservationists shared the vision for conservation. Both areas depended on the private acquisition, and donation, of title to the numerous parcels that comprised them before the land could garner federal protection. Politics in the early 20th and 21st centuries had to be overcome. This work tells the stories in parallel, highlighting and analyzing four strands of similarity to not only …

Specialization Trend: Water Courts, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Definition of property rights is not useful unless there is an enforcement system, either public or private, that backs it up. While the definition of property rights as a solution to the tragedy of the commons has been carefully analyzed in the literature, the enforcement piece has been somewhat overlooked. Water is becoming scarcer and conflict is rising. As a result, the need for an efficient and fair enforcement system is more necessary than ever due to climate change.

Given the complexity of water law and the backlog in the judicial system, introducing specialization in the resolution of water cases …

A Presidential Power Of Monumental Proportions: Does The Antiquities Act Permit The Review And Revision Of National Monuments Or Can The President Steal Your Land?, Maureen A. Mccotter

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Affordable Housing: Of Inefficiency, Market Distortion, And Government Failure, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, I examine the types of costs that are imposed on society as a whole due to the absence of a sufficient number of decent housing units that are affordable to the low-income population. These costs present themselves in relation to health care, education, employment, productivity, homelessness, and incarceration. Some of the costs are direct expenditures while others are the result of lost opportunities.

My hypothesis is that these costs are significant and offer, at the very least, a substantial offset to the cost of creating and subsidizing the operation of the necessary number of affordable housing units …

Right On Time: First Possession In Property And Intellectual Property, Dotan Oliar, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

How should we allocate property rights in unowned tangible and intangible resources? This Article develops a model of original acquisition that draws together common law doctrines of first possession with original acquisition doctrines in patent, copyright, and trademark law. The common denominator is time: in each context, doctrine involves a trade-off between assigning entitlements to resources earlier or later in the process of their development and use. Early awards risk granting exclusivity to parties who may not be capable of putting resources to their best use. Late awards prolong contests for ownership, which may generate waste or discourage acquisition efforts …

How Two Sunken Ships Caused A War: The Legal And Cultural Battle Between Great Britain, Canada, And The Inuit Over The Franklin Expedition Shipwrecks, Christina Labarge

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

When A Tent Is Your Castle: Constitutional Protection Against Unreasonable Searches Of Makeshift Dwellings Of Unhoused Persons, Evanie Parr

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will argue that all jurisdictions should follow the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II in validating makeshift dwellings used by people experiencing homelessness as spaces protected from unwarranted police intrusions by shifting evaluations of “reasonable expectations of privacy” to a more equitable standard that appreciates the realities of economic disparity. This approach to constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures is imperative to protect the rights of people experiencing homelessness, given that such individuals are regularly subjected to invasions of privacy and heightened exposure to the criminal justice system.

Natural Resource And Natural Law Part I: Prior Appropriation, Robert W. Adler

William & Mary Law Review

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of civil disobedience over public land policy in the West, sometimes characterized by armed confrontations between ranchers and federal officials. This trend reflects renewed assertions that applicable positive law violates the natural rights (sometimes of purportedly divine origin) of ranchers and other land users, particularly under the prior appropriation doctrine and grounded in Lockean theories of property. At the same time, Native Americans and environmental activists have also relied on civil disobedience to assert natural rights to a healthy environment based on public trust, fundamental human rights, and other principles. This Article …

President Trump's Big Beautiful Wall: Discrimination, Eminent Domain, And The Public Use Requirement, Meghan K. Tierney

Chicago-Kent Law Review

At a press conference held in Trump Tower New York City on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States by promising to expand the border wall along the Southern United States. President Trump has insisted that his only reasons behind completely separating the United States from Mexico are to curtail illegal immigration and curb drug cartel activity, but many argue that his statements indicate a much more sinister motive based in racial discrimination. The public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause allows the federal government to take private land for the …

Path To Destruction: Cook County's Property Tax System Is A Cause For Concern As It Mimics The Defunct Taxing Procedures That Led To The Detroit Foreclosure Crisis, Robert Romano

Chicago-Kent Law Review

For decades, Cook County, Illinois, has had one of the highest property tax rates in the country, and as a result the County has begun to experience unprecedented foreclosure rates which has contributed, in part, to the State’s significant population decline. Residents are forced to endure a property tax system that disproportionately burdens low-income homeowners, while providing tax breaks to higher-income individuals and commercial owners. The primary causes and characteristics of Cook County’s defunct property tax system are strikingly similar to those that sent the City of Detroit spiraling into bankruptcy in 2013.

This note provides a comparative analysis of …

Pascua V. Bayview Loan Servicing, Llc, 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 4 (Feb. 7, 2019), Scott Cooper

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that an individual who has been appointed special administrator of a decedent’s estate is entitled to participate in the Foreclosure Mediation Program if the property is the special administrator’s primary residence, and they retain an ownership interest through intestate succession laws.

Bounded Rationality And The Theory Of Property, Oren Bar-Gill, Nicola Persico

Notre Dame Law Review

Strong, property rule protection—implemented via injunctions, criminal sanctions, and supercompensatory damages—is a defining aspect of property. What is the theoretical justification for property rule protection? The conventional answer has to do with the alleged shortcomings of the weaker liability rule alternative: it is widely held that liability rule protection—implemented via compensatory damages—would interfere with efficient exchange and jeopardize the market system. We show that these concerns are overstated and that exchange efficiency generally obtains in a liability rule regime—but only when the parties are perfectly rational. When the standard rationality assumption is replaced with a more realistic bounded rationality assumption, …