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Historical Overview Of The American Land Use System: A Diagnostic Approach To Evaluating Governmental Land Use Control, John R. Nolon
Historical Overview Of The American Land Use System: A Diagnostic Approach To Evaluating Governmental Land Use Control, John R. Nolon
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article describes how the American land use system has evolved to address recent environmental and economic development problems. It begins by tracing the history of the legal system used in the United States to control private sector land development and demonstrates how it achieved the flexibility needed to respond to modern challenges. The American land use system has paid a price for this flexibility: it is not a coherent whole, but rather a fragmented mosaic of legal influences. Impressive examples of cohesion are cited that suggest a strategic approach to reforming the system so that it can become an …
Champions Of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform, John R. Nolon
Champions Of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform, John R. Nolon
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article explores the prospects of achieving policy coherence in the field of land use regulation. It explains how, as municipal governments react to pressures and crises at the local level, they discover and adopt new strategies in a constant process of experimentation. Through a properly constructed legal framework, critical information can be relayed from local to higher levels of government, state and federal legislators and judges can respond, and a "system" of law can evolve. Using theories developed in the fields of systems analysis and diffusion of innovations, the Article describes the process by which local communities perceive land …
Katrina's Lament: Reconstructing Federalism, John R. Nolon
Katrina's Lament: Reconstructing Federalism, John R. Nolon
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The subject of stormwater management raises threshold questions about the federal system. Is the regulation of stormwater runoff and the environmental pollution it causes within the federal government's legal jurisdiction? Is it a matter reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment? Or is it a joint responsibility and, if so, precisely how is federal and state authority shared? How does the delegation of power by states to local governments to regulate the use of privately owned land affect the federal-state division of power? What limits should there be on local control of land uses that cause “nonpoint source” pollution, …