Substantive Due Process By Another Name: Koontz, Exactions, And The Regulatory Takings Doctrine, Mark Fenster
Dec 2014
Substantive Due Process By Another Name: Koontz, Exactions, And The Regulatory Takings Doctrine, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, a 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court reversed a state court decision that had limited the application of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard. Nollan and Dolan concern the imposition of regulatory conditions on proposed development, also called exactions, which commonly occurs in land use regulation. In Koontz, a property owner challenged a regulatory agency's denial of his permit application following failed negotiations over exactions. The Florida Supreme Court had concluded that Nollan and Dolan did not extend to conditions that the agency had …
Failed Exactions, Mark Fenster
Dec 2010
Failed Exactions, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
This symposium essay considers the doctrinal quandary created by 'failed exactions' - regulatory conditions on property development that government agencies contemplate but that are never finalized or enforced, usually because the property owner rejects them. A narrow but conceptually challenging issue to the relationship between the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and regulatory takings law, failed exactions could prove profoundly unsettling to current land use practices. A decade ago, the issue of whether failed exactions deserve heightened scrutiny prompted Justice Scalia to issue a dissent from a denial of petition for certiorari in which he stated, somewhat tentatively, that an extortionate demand …
Regulating Land Use In A Constitutional Shadow: The Institutional Contexts Of Exactions, Mark Fenster
Dec 2006
Regulating Land Use In A Constitutional Shadow: The Institutional Contexts Of Exactions, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
In a refreshingly clear and comprehensive decision issued towards the end of its 2004 Term, the Supreme Court explained in Lingle v. Chevron (2005) that the Takings Clause requires compensation only for the effects of a regulation on an individual’s property rights. Under the substantive due process doctrine, by contrast, courts engage in a deferential inquiry into both a regulation’s validity and the means by which the regulation attempts to meet the government’s objective. Lingle’s explanation appeared to cast doubt on the doctrinal foundation and reach of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994), …
Takings Formalism And Regulatory Formulas: Exactions And The Consequences Of Clarity, Mark Fenster
Dec 2003
Takings Formalism And Regulatory Formulas: Exactions And The Consequences Of Clarity, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
A vocal minority of the U.S. Supreme Court recently announced its suspicion that lower courts and state and local administrative agencies are systematically ignoring constitutional rules intended to limit, through heightened judicial review, exactions as a land use regulatory tool. Exactions are the concessions local governments require of property owners as conditions for the issuance of the entitlements that enable the intensified use of real property. In two cases decided over the past two decades, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994), the Court has established under the Takings Clause a logic and metrics …
