Law Commons^™

Green, Or Greed? A Fresh Perspective On The Valuation Of Conservation Easements, Alan L. Feld, Theodore S. Sims, Jacob Nielson

Faculty Scholarship

Charitable contributions of "conservation easements" have since 1980 allowed high-income taxpayers to shelter income from taxation through overvalued deductions. Overvaluation has increased dramatically in the past 20 years: a 2016 study of all easement decisions since 1980 reported that while overvaluation had averaged by a factor of two before 1994, it averaged by a factor of ten for decisions between 1994 and 2016. SOI data disclose that aggregate easement contributions deducted on Schedule A grew from $2.26 billion in 2015 to $6.5 billion in 2018 (the most recent year available). A recent report by supporters of conservation easements acknowledges that …

Conservation Easements As A Tool For Nature Protection, William Snape

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Aba Rpte Conservation Easement Task Force Report: Recommendations Regarding Conservation Easements And Federal Tax Law, W. William Weeks

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Authors' Synopsis: In October 2015, the American Bar Association's Real Property, Trust and Estate Law (RPTE) section convened a Conservation Easement Task Force. The objective of the Task Force was to provide recommendations regarding federal tax law as it relates to conservation easements. This Report is the culmination of the Task Force's work. Part I of the Report is an Executive Summary of the Task Force's recommendations. Part II provides the background necessary to understand the Task Force's recommendations. Part III briefly sets forth the Task Force's comments on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 as it relates …

Climate Change Challenges For Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, And Tools, Jessica Owley, Federico Cheever, Adena R. Rissman, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson Jr., W. William Weeks

Articles

No abstract provided.

Exploiting Conservation Lands: Can Hydrofracking Be Consistent With Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley, Collin Doane

Articles

No abstract provided.

Fixing A Broken Common Law -- Has The Property Law Of Easements And Covenants Been Reformed By A Restatement, Ronald H. Rosenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Conservation Options: An Argument For Statutory Recognition Of Options To Purchase Conservation Easements (Opces), Federico Cheever, Jessica Owley

Articles

Land conservation transactions have been the most active component of the conservation movement in the United States for the past three decades. Conservation organizations have acquired property rights-mostly conservation easements-to protect roughly 40 million acres of land nationwide. However, climate change threatens this vast edifice. Climate change means that the resources that land conservation transactions were intended to protect may not persist on the land protected. Options to purchase conservation easements ("OPCEs") have long played a modest but important role in conservation law practice. In the world climate change is creating, with its substantial uncertainties and shifting windows of opportunity, …

Private Regimes In The Public Sphere: Optimizing The Benefits Of Common Interest Communities, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Keeping Track Of Conservation, Jessica Owley

Articles

Throughout the world, governments require land protection in exchange for development permits. Unfortunately, oftentimes scant attention has been paid to these land protection programs after development. Agencies and permit applicants agree on mitigation rules, but there appears to be little follow-up. When we do not know where conservation is occurring and cannot determine the rules of mitigation projects, the likelihood that they will be successful or enforced diminishes. I journeyed to California in search of answers by tracing four mitigation plans associated with the Federal Endangered Species Act. While I anticipated some difficulties, the tale is more alarming than expected. …

Involuntary Cotenants: Eminent Domain And Energy And Communications Infrastructure Growth, Andrew P. Morriss, Roy Brandys, Michael M. Barron

Faculty Scholarship

The spread of renewable energy mandates, new discoveries of unconventional oil and gas, and the need to harden and upgrade telecommunications infrastructure will lead to expansions in large infrastructure easements over the next decade. Many of these easements will be taken by eminent domain. In this paper we examine the problems posed by this involuntary creation of co-ownership of land. Existing eminent domain laws are insufficient to address the problems created because they allow the courts to vary only one term: price. Given difficulty in pricing many of the other terms to the easements (e.g. indemnification agreements for landowners, controlling …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

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 …

Some Pluralism About Pluralism: A Comment On Hanoch Dagan's "Pluralism And Perfectionism In Private Law", Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Hanoch Dagan is among “those who think it advantageous to get as much ethics into the law as they can,” in the phrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His pluralism is a perfectionism for polytheists: There are many human goods, and each has its domain, including some portion of the law of property. Depending on where we stand on the property landscape at any time, we may be community-minded sharers, devoted romantics in marriage, or coolly rational market actors, and the local property law will smooth each of these paths for us. Property law is built on the design of …

Conservation Easements As Charitable Property: Fiduciary Duties And The Limits Of Charitable Self-Regulation, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

No abstract provided.

Conservation Easements As Charitable Property: Fiduciary Duties And The Limits Of Charitable Self-Regulation, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

No abstract provided.

Conservation Easements At The Climate Change Crossroads, Jessica Owley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Distributed Graduate Seminars: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Studying Land Conservation, Jessica Owley, Adena R. Rissman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Changing Property In A Changing World: A Call For The End Of Perpetual Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Conservation Easement Appraisal Rules And Questions, Stephen J. Small

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Conservation Easements, Appraisals Thereof, And Form 8283 - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Stephen J. Small

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Some Points Re Perpetuity - Code And Regulations

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Excerpt From Kaufman Brief

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Tax Notes Article, Stephen J. Small

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Conservation Easements And Adaptive Management, Jesse Richardson

Law Faculty Scholarship

The perpetual nature of conservation easements makes adaptive management difficult on easement property. Various easement provisions may be used to incorporate adaptive management principles into a conservation easement, but various factors, including state statutory requirements and Internal Revenue Code requirements for deductibility, limit the flexibility of management on conservation easement lands. Jesse Richardson discusses how conservation easements limit implementation of adaptive management principles on protected lands. Case studies of conservation easements that now fail to fulfill the original conservation purpose, but are locked into perpetual conservation, illustrate the limitations of conservation easements. Richardson also discusses likely future conflicts between conservation …

Solar Rights For Texas Property Owners, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In response to Jamie France's note, A Proposed Solar Access Law for the State of Texas, Professor Bronin urges future commentators to focus on three additional areas of inquiry related to proposed solar rights regimes. Bronin argues that such proposals would be strengthened by discussion of potential legal challenges to the proposals, related political issues, and renewable energy microgrids. Ms. France’s proposal for the State of Texas includes the elimination of preexisting private property restrictions that negatively affect solar access. Bronin argues that this proposal would be strengthened by a discussion of potential challenges under federal and state takings clauses. …

Solar Rights, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The rights to access and to harness the rays of the sun - solar rights - are extremely valuable. These rights can determine whether and how an individual can take advantage of the sun’s light, warmth, or energy, and they can have significant economic consequences. Accordingly, for at least two thousand years, people have attempted to assign solar rights in a fair and efficient manner. In the United States, attempts to assign solar rights have fallen short. A quarter century ago, numerous American legal scholars debated this deficiency. They agreed that this country lacked a coherent legal framework for the …

Slides: Groundwater Declines, Climate Change And Approaches To Adaptation, Katharine Jacobs

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Katharine Jacobs, Director of the Arizona Water Institute, University of Arizona

37 slides

The Growing Influence Of Tort And Property Law On Natural Resources Law: Case Studies Of Coal Bed Methane Development And Geologic Carbon Sequestration, Alexandra B. Klass

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

19 pages.

"Alexandra B. Klass, Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School"

Slides: Ecotrust Forests, Bettina Von Hagen

Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)

Presenter: Bettina Von Hagen, Ecotrust Forests, OR

25 slides

Agenda: Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, And Lessons Learned, Communities Committee, University Of Montana. School Of Forestry. Bolle Center For People And Forests, Wilderness Society (U.S.), Nature Conservancy Of Montana, Swan Ecosystem Center, Northwest Connections, Blackfoot Challenge, Flathead Economic Policy Center, Pinchot Institute For Conservation, American Forests, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)

Community-owned forests may be the answer for some U.S. communities now confronting unanticipated and unwanted large scale land use changes – changes that could irrevocably change their local landscapes and quality of life. Across the country, millions of acres of private forest lands are being put up for sale as the forest products companies who own them find other, cheaper sources of supply. If, as is likely, purchasers divide and convert the forests to residential or other development uses, nearby communities face losing the critical economic, environmental, recreational, social, cultural, and aesthetic values and benefits those forests have traditionally provided. …

The Emergence Of Exacted Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley Lippmann

Articles

No abstract provided.