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Full-Text Articles in Law

Euclid Lives: The Survival Of Progressive Jurisprudence, Charles M. Haara, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2015

Euclid Lives: The Survival Of Progressive Jurisprudence, Charles M. Haara, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

The Supreme Court's expanded use of regulatory takings is making a highly controversial and confusing concept more difficult to apply and defend. The Court and commentators are invited to explore a different approach-- Progressive jurisprudence, as represented by the Court's enduring opinion in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co . This Commentary examines the reinvigoration of the Takings Clause and, in historical and ideological terms, discusses the Progressiveness of Euclid and of the regulatory scheme the Euclid Court approved. Professors Haar and Wolf identify and explore five inquiries concerning the character of regulations affecting the use, ownership, and value …


Earning Deference: Reflections On The Merger Of Environmental And Land-Use Law, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2015

Earning Deference: Reflections On The Merger Of Environmental And Land-Use Law, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

The bedrock notion that courts should, in the overwhelming majority of cases, defer to lawmakers is currently under attack in the nation's courts, commentary and classrooms. Leading the way are several United States Supreme Court Justices who, in cases involving the Commerce Clause, the Takings Clause and Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment, are much more willing than their immediate predecessors to second-guess the motives and tactics of elected and appointed officials at all levels of government. Given this new juris-political reality, it is more important than ever that local government officials--who are often (though, certainly, not always justifiably) viewed …


Environmental Law Slogans For The New Millennium, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2015

Environmental Law Slogans For The New Millennium, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

Contrary to the bleakest predictions offered by environmental fatalists during the latter half of the 1900s, humanity and much of the plant and animal kingdom survived New Year's Eve 1999. Similarly, contrary to the dire warnings of industrial organizations and lobbyists that overburdening environmental regulations would spell the end of profitable, American capitalism, the year 2000 dawned in the United States with the world's most extensive array of anti-pollution and pro-conservation measures regulating the globe's most impressive economic engines. New times demand new paradigms; it is much more than a calendar change that occasions a reconsideration of the status and …


A Yellow Light For “Green Zoning”: Some Words Of Caution About Incorporating Green Building Standards Into Local Land Use Law, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

A Yellow Light For “Green Zoning”: Some Words Of Caution About Incorporating Green Building Standards Into Local Land Use Law, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

The focus of this essay is a growing practice to which we can attach the label “Green Zoning” — the incorporation of LEED and competing privately generated standards into local government law, as part of the existing zoning or land use ordinance, or as a free-standing green building ordinance. After reviewing some of the pertinent literature on this topic, this essay will highlight and provide illustrations of six problems with Green Zoning practices: 1. The Delegation Problem — Can and should local laws be based on a moving target (standards set by private parties that continue to change and evolve)? …


The Brooding Omnipresence Of Regulatory Takings: Urban Origins And Effects, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

The Brooding Omnipresence Of Regulatory Takings: Urban Origins And Effects, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

This essay, written on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, discusses the urban settings for key regulatory takings decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, reviews the state of expert commentary before the rebirth of regulatory takings in the high court, explores the complex relationship between liberal justices and private property rights protection, reviews regulatory takings scholarship that has appeared in the pages of this journal, and closes with some thoughts about the future of urban regulatory takings


Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The “Progressive” Peril, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The “Progressive” Peril, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

In "How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution," Richard Epstein bemoans the growth of a dominant big government. How Progressives should receive a warm reception from the audience, lawyers and laypeople alike, who view the New Deal as a mistake of epic proportions. For the rest of us, significant gaps will still remain between, on the one hand, our understanding of the nation’s past and of the complex nature of constitutional lawmaking and, on the other, Epstein’s version of the nature of twentieth-century reform and Progressive jurisprudence.


Supreme Guidance For Wet Growth: Lessons From The High Court On The Powers And Responsibilities Of Local Governments, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

Supreme Guidance For Wet Growth: Lessons From The High Court On The Powers And Responsibilities Of Local Governments, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

Before the merger of water law and land use planning can occur, local and state regulators need strong guidance from experts in the field, not only in extra-legal fields such as planning, hydrology, geology, engineering, biology, and transportation, but also in mainstream legal areas including legislation (local, state, and federal), administrative law, and enforcement. The purpose of this article is to identify a somewhat unorthodox source of guidance - the United States Supreme Court, specifically the Rehnquist Court from October, 1984, through June, 2005, a period of remarkable stability for the nation’s highest tribunal.


Taking Regulatory Takings Personally: The Perils Of (Mis)Reasoning By Analogy, Michael Wolf Nov 2014

Taking Regulatory Takings Personally: The Perils Of (Mis)Reasoning By Analogy, Michael Wolf

Michael A Wolf

This Article includes four parts: (1) a defense of the real property/personal property distinction for a post-deconstructionist legal world, (2) a review of difficulties common law courts have encountered when applying real property concepts to disputes over money and personalty, (3) an exploration of the "rhetorical mismatch" typified by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion in Eastern Enterprises, and (4) a respectful request for judges to resist the temptation to collapse categories and instead to maintain, or even erect, meaningful distinctions.


Strategies For Making Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Tools 'Takings-Proof', Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

Strategies For Making Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Tools 'Takings-Proof', Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

While the costs of some Sea-Level Rise (SLR) adaptation tools are undeniably daunting, the American legal system poses an additional, potentially budget-busting impediment — the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Officials at all governmental strata and from all three branches should keep the demands made by the Takings Clause, as interpreted by the judiciary, in mind as they choose tools from the diverse SLR-adaptation toolbox, as they justify their choices to the electorate and other constituencies, as they put those tools to use, and as they defend that use from litigants claiming abuse. This …


Conservation Easements And The "Term Creep" Problem, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

Conservation Easements And The "Term Creep" Problem, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

This Essay first discusses the “term creep” problem that has long plagued the Anglo-American common law of real property, that is, the tendency of common law courts (and in turn commentators and legislators) to use the same label to describe two or more conceptually discrete, though related, concepts. The confusion between easements of the “traditional” and “conservation” varieties is just one in a long line of situations in which the decision to allow often significantly dissimilar concepts to share the same name has led to unfortunate consequences. The second part of the Essay explains the substantive nature of the hybrids …


William Faulkner, Legal Commentator: Humanity And Endurance In Hollywood's Yoknapatawpha, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

William Faulkner, Legal Commentator: Humanity And Endurance In Hollywood's Yoknapatawpha, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

Two of the several films based on William Faulkner's writings - “Intruder in the Dust” and “Tomorrow” - are sensitive adaptations that are permeated with themes regarding the nature of justice, the role of the attorney, and the place of law and lawlessness in society. In many ways, a careful study of each of these two films (and of the novel and story upon which they are based) reveals that William Faulkner holds a place as an important American legal commentator. No writer (before or since Faulkner) captures so vividly and so truly the moral predicament of an American South …


Yes, Thankfully, Euclid Lives, Charles M. Haara, Michael Allan Wolf Nov 2014

Yes, Thankfully, Euclid Lives, Charles M. Haara, Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

Professors Haar and Wolf reiterate their endorsement of Progressive jurisprudence, as embodied in the Supreme Court's opinion in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., despite Professor Eric Claeys's effort to expose the political theory underlying Progressive legal thought. They highlight problems with Professor Claeys's portrayal of the actual practice of zoning and with his use of history, problems that seriously undercut Professor Claeys's findings regarding the political beliefs of early zoning and planning advocates, the evolution of zoning law in the courts, and the role natural law played in American legal history.