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Full-Text Articles in Law
Investigating Appraisal Discrimination, Carol Brown
Investigating Appraisal Discrimination, Carol Brown
Law Faculty Publications
Over the past five years, the question of whether real estate appraisers systematically undervalue homes purchased or occupied by Black and Hispanic households has emerged as a significant civil rights issue. Major media have highlighted some instances where the same home received a dramatically higher appraisal when the appraiser believed the client was white rather than Black. Some social scientists have argued that appraisal discrimination is the root cause of the lower housing prices that prevail in many urban minority neighborhoods— and thus an important source of the racial “wealth gap.” Candidate Biden expressed strong concern about the issue during …
Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait
Home Of The Dispossessed, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
The objects that people interact with on a daily basis speak to and of these people who acquire, display, and handle them—the relationship is one of exchange. People living among household objects come to care for their things, identify with them, and think of them as a constituent part of themselves. A meaningful problem arises, however, when people who have deep connections to the objects that populate their lived spaces are not those who possess the legal rights of ownership. These individuals and groups—usually excluded from the realm of property ownership along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity—live on an …
Keeping Promises And Meeting Needs: Public Charities At A Crossroads, Allison Anna Tait
Keeping Promises And Meeting Needs: Public Charities At A Crossroads, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
When a charitable organization cannot fulfill the terms of a charitable gift agreement, it must decide whether to keep a promise or meet a need. That is to say, a charitable organization can either preserve original donor intent, adhering to conditions placed on a gift, or it can attempt to modify the terms of the gift in order to budget and spend the funds more effectively. If an institution chooses to keep a promise, it might be stuck with a fund it cannot use because of conditions placed on the money at the time of the gift. In order to …
"Why Won't My Homeowners Insurance Cover My Loss?": Reassessing Property Insurance Concurrent Causation Coverage Disputes, Peter N. Swisher
"Why Won't My Homeowners Insurance Cover My Loss?": Reassessing Property Insurance Concurrent Causation Coverage Disputes, Peter N. Swisher
Law Faculty Publications
Property insurance coverage disputes can be extremely complex cases when there are multiple concurrent causes in a causal chain of events and when some of these concurrent causes are covered under the policy language but other concurrent causes are excluded from coverage. To complicate matters enormously, there are no fewer than three different judicial approaches attempting to resolve this concurrent causation interpretive conundrum. Over the past two decades, a number of property insurance companies have attempted to address this interpretive problem contractually by inserting so-called anti-concurrent causation clauses into their property insurance policy language. But these anti-concurrent causation clauses have …
Rethinking Adverse Possession: An Essay On Ownership And Possession, Carol N. Brown
Rethinking Adverse Possession: An Essay On Ownership And Possession, Carol N. Brown
Law Faculty Publications
In the wake of the present real estate crisis, there has been prolonged discussion of the wrongdoing that led to systemic failures in the national real estate market. The mortgage crisis caught the nation’s attention because of its large scale and its rippling effect throughout the economy. Equally nefarious is the impact of adverse possession on the rights of individual property owners. While a single adverse possession does not affect the national market in the same way as the mortgage crisis did, to the individual owner, the wrongdoing, in the form of a trespass, that ripens into title, is just …
A Time To Preserve: A Call For Formal Private-Party Rights In Perpetual Conservation Easements, Carol N. Brown
A Time To Preserve: A Call For Formal Private-Party Rights In Perpetual Conservation Easements, Carol N. Brown
Law Faculty Publications
For more than a century, conservation easements have been used in the United States to maintain open space or protect the environment. Such easements produce a public good. They increase the amount of protected landscapes by preserving property encumbered by easements from private development or consumption while simultaneously allowing grantors the flexibility to negotiate the retention of development rights tailored to meet the grantors' needs. My thesis is that private parties should have a common law property interest in conservation easements sufficient to confer standing to seek injunctive relief to enforce conservation easements and to sue for damages when they …
Casting Lots: The Illusion Of Justice And Accountability In Property Allocation, Carol N. Brown
Casting Lots: The Illusion Of Justice And Accountability In Property Allocation, Carol N. Brown
Law Faculty Publications
When does resorting to random selection by casting lots produce a just distribution or allocation of property? Some argue generally in support of casting lots, asserting that it is a viable substitute for equal distribution of property. Others argue against casting lots, contending that it undermines distributive justice. This article considers instances of casting lots from the nineteenth century to the present and explains why the latter view is the better view.
The Antelope is one of the earliest United States Supreme Court cases addressing distribution of property by casting lots. It chronicles a dispute over the allocation of captured …
Rethinking Theft Crimes In Virginia, John G. Douglass
Rethinking Theft Crimes In Virginia, John G. Douglass
Law Faculty Publications
In sum, despite the efforts of the General Assembly, Virginia law remains stuck between the "rock" of antiquated theft crimes and the "hard place" of due process. Tinkering with procedural rules merely masks the real problem. My aim in this article is to suggest a different approach. It is time to address the substantive definition of theft crimes in Virginia: to consolidate the crimes of larceny, embezzlement, and false pretenses-as most other American jurisdictions have done into a single offense. By dealing with substance rather than procedure, we can eliminate historical distinctions which serve only to confound prosecutors and complicate …
Taking The Takings Claim: A Policy And Economic Analysis Of The Survival Of Takings Claims After Property Transfers, Carol N. Brown
Taking The Takings Claim: A Policy And Economic Analysis Of The Survival Of Takings Claims After Property Transfers, Carol N. Brown
Law Faculty Publications
What ought to be the nature of an owner's right to pursue a regulatory takings claim when the regulation the owner seeks to challenge was in place when the owner acquired the regulated property? Some argue that an owner should not be entitled to challenge such a restriction as a Fifth Amendment taking if the property was already impaired by the regulation at the time the owner acquired it. Proponents of this view contend that allowing subsequent owners to challenge the enforcement of regulations, pre-dating their acquisition of title, and of which they had notice, would confer undeserved windfalls and …
Don't Go And Do Something Rash About Cram Down Interest Rates, David G. Epstein
Don't Go And Do Something Rash About Cram Down Interest Rates, David G. Epstein
Law Faculty Publications
This Article considers the second and different question of how to value the proposed payments under the plan. While the question of how to value the proposed payments under the plan is different from the question of how to value the creditor's security interest in property, there is a connection between the answers to the questions. The value of the payments must at least equal the value of the security interest.
The Implicit "Takings" Jurisprudence Of Article 9 Of The Uniform Commercial Code, David Frisch
The Implicit "Takings" Jurisprudence Of Article 9 Of The Uniform Commercial Code, David Frisch
Law Faculty Publications
Part I of this Article begins by reasserting that central to the idea of property rights is the legal entitlement to remedies that permits a person to exercise dominion over the specific asset or to exclude the exercise of dominion by others. Next, part I examines the essence of a security interest and demonstrates that it is a protected property interest. Part II sets forth a model of priorities that suggests that although property interests should ordinarily be protected by a property rule, there is something special about a security interest, implying the need for greater contingency and justifying a …
Property, W. Wade Berryhill
Property, W. Wade Berryhill
Law Faculty Publications
The General Assembly made several minor changes affecting property law in Virginia. The most significant of these changes was the amendment of the Code's provisions regarding a spouse's dower and curtesy interests in the separate estate of a deceased spouse. In addition to this legislation, the Virginia Supreme Court decided several cases dealing with varied property issues. The decisions discussed below are those which should have the most interest to the general practitioner. The real estate specialist, no doubt, is already aware of most of them. In the majority of the cases which follow, the Virginia Supreme Court affirms and …