Law Commons^™

Land Use Law Reform: A Judicial And Practical Imperative, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The practical lesson learned from a review of New York case law on land use planning is straightforward: judges will seldom overturn land use regulations when it is obvious, in the structure of the regulatory program, that considerable and comprehensive planning is involved. When judges sustain land use regulations, they routinely find in the regulatory scheme a valid local planning objective that saves the regulation from falling under the property owner's attack. The bases for this judicial reasoning lie in the statutory requirement that zoning provisions must be adopted "in accordance with" a "comprehensive plan" and the constitutional requirement that …