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Doing A Double Take: Rail-Trail Takings Litigation In The Post-Brandt Trust Era, Danaya C. Wright Nov 2015

Doing A Double Take: Rail-Trail Takings Litigation In The Post-Brandt Trust Era, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

After providing a brief explanation of railroad development, railbanking, the takings cases, and the Brandt Trust decision, this Article will explore the implications of each of these three legal issues at the heart of the takings disputes. What makes the decision in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States particularly disappointing is not that the Court came to the wrong conclusion in its interpretation of the railroad’s interest in federally granted railroad rights of way (“FGROWs”) granted pursuant to the 1875 General Railroad Right of Way Act, but that its wrong interpretation adds all of the 1875 Act FGROW …


Reliance Interests And Takings Liability For Rail-Trail Conversions: Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright Nov 2015

Reliance Interests And Takings Liability For Rail-Trail Conversions: Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

On October 1, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a relatively obscure case,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States. On its face, the case involves an interpretation of the property rights created by the General Railroad Right of Way Act of 1875, which gave to any railroad, chartered by a state or territory, "[t]he right of way [200 feet wide] through the public lands of the United States." The 1875 Act was passed after a brief hiatus in congressional support for railroads following the era of lavish land grants between 1862 and 1871, in which over 94 …


New Era Of Lavish Land Grants: Taking Public Property For Private Use And Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright Feb 2015

New Era Of Lavish Land Grants: Taking Public Property For Private Use And Brandt Revocable Trust V. United States, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

J.R. Pole's new book, Contract and Consent: Representation and the Jury in Anglo-American Legal History, is a delightful romp through centuries of Anglo-American history, law, and political theory. It would be better titled Contract, Consent, Juries, Sovereignty, and the State: A History of the Anglicization of Western Political Ideas. But in any event, this delightful set of essays, some more closely linked together than others, spans a breathtaking set of ideas--from sovereignty to the social compact to slavery to the moral agency of juries--through a breathtaking set of sources--from Slade's Case to Shakespeare to Aquinas to Faust to the Federalists--with …