Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

What's Your Damage?! The Supreme Court Has Wrecked Temporary Takings Jurisprudence, Timothy M. Harris Jan 2023

What's Your Damage?! The Supreme Court Has Wrecked Temporary Takings Jurisprudence, Timothy M. Harris

Faculty Publications

In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the U.S. Supreme Court unnecessarily expanded the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. In doing so, the Court veered away from established precedent and overturned prior case law—without expressly admitting to doing so. In 2021, the Court held that a California law allowing access by union organizers to enter private property under certain conditions took away a landowner’s right to exclude others and was (apparently) immediately compensable under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Prior law had subjected temporary takings to an uncertain, unpopular, and ambiguous balancing test—but the Cedar Point holding turned temporary takings jurisprudence on …


Does The Constitution Allow Private Companies To Use Eminent Domain Against A State? Penn East Pipeline Co., Llc V. New Jersey, Crystal J. Anthony Jul 2022

Does The Constitution Allow Private Companies To Use Eminent Domain Against A State? Penn East Pipeline Co., Llc V. New Jersey, Crystal J. Anthony

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

In 2021 the United States Supreme Court decided in the case PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey that Section 717(h) of the Natural Gas Act authorized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to delegate the government’s eminent domain power to private companies. The Court’s decision allows a private company to condemn all “necessary rights-of-way,” whether privately-owned or state-owned land. This case note explores the history of the government’s eminent domain power and the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity from lawsuits. The majority opinion in PennEast reasoned that the states waived their sovereign immunity at the ratification of the Constitution. Thus, according …


Taking It Too Far: Growth Management And The Limits To Land-Use Regulation In Maine, Michael A. Duddy Apr 2020

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 Apr 2020

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 …


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 Apr 2018

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 Feb 2018

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 …


When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler Feb 2018

When Should Rights "Trump"? An Examination Of Speech And Property, Laura S. Underkuffler

Maine Law Review

In his well-known article, Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust, Professor Richard Epstein—a leading contemporary voice in the fields of property theory and constitutional law—makes a simple but compelling argument. There has been, he argues, a mistake in “the dominant mode of thinking about property rights during the past fifty years [that] has been ... of constitutional dimensions.” This mistake, in Professor Epstein's view, is the refusal of the federal courts to accord to individual property rights the same kind of protection from government regulation that is accorded to other constitutional rights. Using free speech as his example, Professor …


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 Dec 2017

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 …


Kelo V. City Of New London-Wrongly Decided And A Missed Opportunity For Principled Line Drawing With Respect To Eminent Domain Takings, Orlando E. Delogu Nov 2017

Kelo V. City Of New London-Wrongly Decided And A Missed Opportunity For Principled Line Drawing With Respect To Eminent Domain Takings, Orlando E. Delogu

Maine Law Review

No eminent domain taking case in the last twenty-five years has excited the level of interest, attention, and debate as has Kelo v. City of New London. The Supreme Court’s decision has not quelled that debate. If anything the stridency, the emotional tenor, of the debate has increased. And in the few months since the decision came down, several dozen states (in the absence of any meaningful federal limitation on what constitutes “public use”) have proposed statutes or constitutional amendments that would limit their exercise of eminent domain (taking) powers. There is even talk of federal legislation to temper, to …


A Proposal For Establishing Specialized Federal And State "Takings Courts", John Martinez Oct 2017

A Proposal For Establishing Specialized Federal And State "Takings Courts", John Martinez

Maine Law Review

Takings doctrine is a mess. Let's just accept that and establish specialized federal and state "takings courts" to adjudicate takings claims. Takings claims arise when governmental conduct is alleged to detrimentally affect private property. Adjudication of takings claims may initially seem straightforward: the Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause, as well as analogous state constitutional provisions, plainly provide that the government shall not take private property for public use without just compensation. In 1978, the United States Supreme Court confessed that takings analysis is hopelessly ad hoc. Decades later, in 2005, the Court abrogated a test for takings that it had …


Transition Losses In The Electric Power Market: A Challenge To The Premises Underlying The Arguments For Compensation, Lois R. Lupica Jan 2000

Transition Losses In The Electric Power Market: A Challenge To The Premises Underlying The Arguments For Compensation, Lois R. Lupica

Faculty Publications

In this Article, Professor Lois R. Lupica examines whether the electric utility industry, currently j.n the midst of deregulation, ought to sustain the resulting transition losses. Due to the signifi· cant modification of legal rules affecting the electric power market and changes in regulatory policy, the utilities currently have expenditures and expectations that are unrecoverable in a competitive market. In recent years, momentum has moved in the direction of compensating the electric utilities and their investors for these losses. Professor Lupica challenges the arguments for transition loBS recovery and ultimately concludes that the doctrinal premises in support oftransition loss recovery …