Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Partial Takings, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Partial Takings, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
Partial takings allow the government to expropriate the parts of an asset it needs, leaving the owner the remainder. Both vital and common, partial takings present unique challenges to the standard rules of eminent domain. Partial takings may result in the creation of suboptimal, and even unusable, parcels. Additionally, partial takings create assessment problems that do not arise when parcels are taken as a whole. Finally, partial takings engender opportunities for inefficient strategic behavior on the part of the government after the partial taking has been carried out. Current jurisprudence fails to resolve these problems and can even exacerbate them. …
The Hidden Function Of Takings Compensation, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
The Hidden Function Of Takings Compensation, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
To date, scholars have justified the constitutional mandate to pay compensation for takings of property on the intuitively appealing grounds that fairness demands recompensing aggrieved owners; on the basis of a belief that government that fails to pay will suffer from “fiscal illusion” and take excessively; or due to the need to neutralize politically powerful property owners who would otherwise foil socially beneficial projects. This Essay offers a new explanation of the role of takings compensation in ensuring good government. Inspired by public choice theory, we argue that takings compensation is intended to reduce the incentives for corruption by limiting …
Taking Compensation Private, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
Taking Compensation Private, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
In light of the expansive interpretation of the ""public use"" requirement, the payment of ""just compensation"" remains the only meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power and, correspondingly, the only safeguard of private property owners' rights against abusive takings. Yet, the current compensation regime is suboptimal. While both efficiency and fairness require paying full compensation for seizures by eminent domain, current law limits the compensation to market value. Despite the virtual consensus about the inadequacy of market compensation, courts adhere to it for a purely practical reason: there is no way to measure the true subjective value of property …
Selling Mayberry: Communities And Individuals In Law And Economics, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman
Selling Mayberry: Communities And Individuals In Law And Economics, Gideon Parchomovsky, Peter Siegelman
All Faculty Scholarship
The small village of Cheshire, Ohio was recently acquired in its entirety by the firm whose giant power plant, located at the edge of town, caused it serious pollution problems. Although the plant was worth substantially more than the town, this was not a simple Coasean bargain. This paper combines an ethnographic methodology with theoretical insights from law and economics to present an empirical and theoretic challenge to the standard account of nuisance disputes. We explore the transaction in detail and explain what prevented collective action and holdout problems that are usually thought to hinder bargaining with groups. Specifically, we …