Law Commons^™

Constitutional Limitations On Sovereignty, 2014 Edition, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property.

The …

Requiem For Regulation, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

This comment reviews U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past 100 years which have considered the constitutional limitations on governmental powers. It finds that at the three-quarter mark of the 20th century, a remarkable set of Court precedents had swollen the regulatory powers of governments while shrinking private rights to property and contract. But since the Reagan years, a more conservative Court has undertaken to curtail governmental activity in general, and to limit federal, state, and local planning in particular. A number of 5-4 decisions expanded private property rights and contracted the scope of the federal “commerce power.” The comment …