Land Use Law Commons^™

Legal Context For Construction Of Bristol Veterans' Home Universally-Accessible Fishing Pier, Jourdan Thompson

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

This study reviews the legal requirements governing design and construction of a proposed universally-accessible fishing pier located at the Rhode Island Veterans’ Home in Bristol, Rhode Island. The pier would provide veterans and other members of the public with accessible recreational fishing opportunities. However, federal, state, and local approvals will be required before the project can move forward. This study provides an overview of required permitting and approvals by the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), Town of Bristol, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). In addition, it considers the role of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) …

Parallel State, Gregory Dolin, Irina D. Manta

Cardozo Law Review

Alternatively glamorized and reviled, Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns, known as 'favelas," have become a fixture of the city's architecture and life. It is estimated that about 1.5 million people reside in these informal settlements that are scattered in the center and outskirts of Brazil's second-largest metropolitan area. Operating in the shadow of the law and lacking formal ownership title, favela residents have constructed an intricate set of informal rules to buy, sell, rent, and bequeath property that is often administered by the residents' associations of individual neighborhoods, which also assist in mediating related conflicts. While largely untested legal mechanisms may …

Aldo Leopold, Estella Bergere, Mia Casita And Sheepherding In New Mexico And Colorado, Andrew Gulliford

Natural Resources Journal

Personal and regional history of Peggy Bergon, Aldo Leopold, and sheepherding.

Rules And Values In Virtual Optimization Of California Hydropower, Sonya F. P. Ziaja

Natural Resources Journal

Optimization models for California’s hydropower system are designed to be decision-support tools and aids for climate adaptation decision-making. In practice, they fall short of this goal. One potential explanation is that optimization models are not more successful because they are built on, and depend on, a misrepresentation of law and politics. The legal reality of California’s hydropower system is a web of networked jurisdictions of multiple federal and state agencies, with varying levels of coordination, long periods of legally obligated stability with rigid rules, and prone to conflict, but with multiple procedures for conflict resolution. Barriers to climate adaptation from …

Introduction, Natural Resources Vii Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Hydropower Development In India: The Legal-Economic Design To Fuelgrowth?, Surabhi Karambelkar

Natural Resources Journal

Economic liberalization beginning in the early 1990s has represented a paradigm shift in policy discourse in India, from social welfare to economic growth. With its potential benefits of generating power for the growing economy and significant revenue through electricity sales and royalty payments, hydropower development has received center-stage in the hydrorich but economically weaker Himalayan states of India. Using an institutional approach to examine the evolution of laws and policies on electricity, land, environment, and water, this article seeks to uncover how prevailing legal and economic systems prioritize hydropower generation over other water uses. It argues that federal and state …

Liability And Compensation For Oil Spill Accidents: International Regime And Its Implementation In China, Yuan Yang

Natural Resources Journal

Marine oil spill accidents have long been caused by ship collisions. However, the proliferation of offshore oil and gas installations portends a marked increase in oil spills from these sources. This presents a unique enforcement challenge for international and Chinese domestic systems for oil pollution liability and compensation that were developed in response to the threat of ship-based oil pollution. This article focuses on how the international liability and compensation regime for oil pollution has been implemented in China, and whether a combination of the international regime and domestic Chinese regulations could provide an adequate mechanism for holding offshore oil …

Nasty Weather And Ugly Produce: Climate Change, Agricultural Adaptation, And Food Waste, Richard Moore

Natural Resources Journal

Food systems worldwide are threatened by climate change, as reflected, for example, in the diminished yields of fruits and vegetables and reduced production of global fisheries. This article discusses the threats of climate change on agricultural production and the need for agricultural adaptation. It posits that food insecurity must be considered in terms of climate change and its likely effects on food production. The article argues that agricultural mitigation and adaptation measures should must be pursued and communicated through the mechanisms of the Paris Agreement. In the United States, reducing food waste effectuated by the regulation on the culling of …

Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities In Twentieth-Century Spain By Erikswyngedouw, John Morseau

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Natural Resources I. Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Domestic Well Exemption In The West: A Case Study Of Santa Fe’S Municipal Ordinance, Maxine N. Paul

Natural Resources Journal

In the case of Bounds v. State of New Mexico, the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a statute that allows domestic wells to be permitted with less oversight than other water rights. The statute, known as the domestic well exemption, is common in various forms throughout the Western United States. Currently, there are an estimated 200,000 permitted domestic wells across the State of New Mexico, increasing at a rate of approximately 5,000 per year. Various scholars have argued for amendments to domestic well statutes or local regulations to make exempt well applications as rigorous as other water …

Fighting For Environmental Justice: The Life And Work Of Professor Eileen Gauna, Clifford J. Villa

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Public Resource Ownership And Community Engagement In A Modern Energy Landscape, Samantha Hepburn

Pace Environmental Law Review

The onshore resource conflicts that have erupted in the Eastern states of Australia highlight the deep need for axiomatic structural change in public resource ownership frameworks. Much of the conflict that has arisen stems from the failure of the state, as owner, to give proper regard to the social and environmental concerns relevant to the expansion of onshore resource development. The underlying rationale for vesting resources in the state is to ensure they are managed for the benefit of the community as a whole. The implied sumption is that public benefit obligations are met through state administration because this is …

Let’S Be Reasonable: Why Neither Nollan/Dolan Nor Penn Central Should Govern Generally-Applied Legislative Exactions After Koontz, Glen Hansen

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article explains why the Nollan/Dolan test should not apply to legislatively imposed exactions, provided that such exactions satisfy two key criteria: (1) the exaction is generally-applied; and (2) the exaction is applied based on a set legislative formula without any meaningful administrative discretion in that application. Legislative exactions that fail to meet those two criteria should be governed by the Nollan/Dolan standard of review in the same manner as the ad hoc adjudicative exaction in Koontz. Furthermore, legislative exactions that satisfy those two criteria also should not be governed by the factored analysis in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. …

Playing Nice In The Sandbox: Making Room For Historic Structures In Olympic National Park, Christopher Chellis

Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy

As ambitious as it is at times challenging to meaningfully apply, the Wilderness Act purports to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. Interest groups often seek to extract from the Act a meaning of wilderness that comports with whatever interest they wish to secure for themselves and their members, and their interests often conflict with each other. These conflicts can turn national parks into sandboxes where interest groups draw lines and ask the National Park Service to pick a side. The losing party inevitably looks to a judge …

It Takes A Village: Designating "Tiny House" Villages As Transitional Housing Campgrounds, Ciara Turner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A relatively new proposal to reduce homelessness in the United States involves extraordinarily small dwellings. While the “tiny house” movement is intuitively appealing and has found sporadic success, strict housing codes, building codes, and zoning laws often destroy the movement before it can get off the ground. One possibility for getting around these zoning and building code challenges, without drastic overhauls to health and safety codes, is to create a new state-level zoning classification of “transitional campgrounds.” A new zoning classification would alleviate the issue because campgrounds are consistently subject to less strict building codes, which could permit tiny houses …

Public Access To Spatial Data On Private-Land Conservation, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

Information is critical for environmental governance. The rise of digital mapping has the potential to advance private-land conservation by assisting with conservation planning, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability. However, privacy concerns from private landowners and the capacity of conservation entities can influence efforts to track spatial data. We examine public access to geospatial data on conserved private lands and the reasons data are available or unavailable. We conduct a qualitative comparative case study based on analysis of maps, documents, and interviews. We compare four conservation programs involving different conservation tools: conservation easements (the growing but incomplete National Conservation Easement Database), regulatory …

Land Regime Choice In Close-Knit Communities: The Case Of The First Nations Land Management Act, Malcolm Lavoie, Moira Lavoie

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Land interests on Canadian First Nations reserves have long been governed by the rigid and paternalistic provisions of the federal Indian Act, which require the permission of the federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs for even relatively minor land transactions. Yet an increasing number of First Nations have taken advantage of the 1999 First Nations Land Management Act (FNLMA), which allows First Nations to adopt a custom land code that replaces most of the reserve land provisions of the Indian Act in their community. This paper seeks to examine how First Nation communities have chosen to exercise their powers under this …

Earthquakes In The Oilpatch: The Regulatory And Legal Issues Arising Out Of Oil And Gas Operation Induced Seismicity, Monika U. Ehrman

Georgia State University Law Review

This article reviews the scientific theories and studies regarding induced seismicity, in addition to examining the current regulatory framework and litigation arising out of these seismic events. Lastly, it provides strategies to aid stakeholders and identifies challenges likely to arise in the future.

Part I of this Article provides a review of the geoscience theories regarding natural and induced seismicity. Part II reviews the current scientific literature regarding a possible relationship between certain oil and gas operations and induced seismicity. Part III reviews the existing regulatory structure addressing seismicity in affected states, including possible applicable environmental legislation. Part IV discusses …

Living Tiny Legally, James G. Rollin

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over the last 40 years, the average new United States house has increased in size by more than 1,000 square feet, from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 (earliest year available from the Census Bureau) to 2,687 square feet last year (Perry, 2016). In that same time period, there was a 91% increase in home square footage per inhabitant and a decrease in average household size. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average home in the United States costs approximately $358,000 to build, an increase of roughly $200,000 since 1998. Meanwhile, the average annual income in …

The Road To Yamoussoukro, Vivica Brown

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Air transportation plays an important role in any country’s evolution because it accelerates the convergence of goods and people. Creating a cooperative air transport system could unlock the potential for a long awaited, remarkable economic growth in Africa. “The African aviation market is perhaps one that has the most potential for growth out of the global regions, due to it being a comparatively young industry and servicing a large and rapidly developing population.” Africa is home to 15.96% of the world’s population, over 1.1 billion people, but it still accounts for less than 4% of the global air service market. …

Some Rough Historical Parallels Between South Africa And The United States, Denis Binder

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Democratic Street, Sudarshan Tiwari

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Anti-Money Laundering Initiatives For The South African Real Estate Market, Jeffrey R. Boles

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Financial Inclusion In South Africa: An Integrated Framework For Financial Inclusion Of Vulnerable Communities In South Africa's Regulatory System Reform, Lydie Louis, Frederic Chartier

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Vulnerable communities in developing countries like the poor in South Africa are not included in their country’s formal economy because the poor have little or no access to financial services. As such, the poor struggle to survive, and to capture the interests of the banking industry to provide them with access to affordable financial services. Public-private financial inclusion initiatives have been insignificant or proven unsustainable to include the poor into the financial fabric of their domestic country. This is because financial inclusion initiatives have primarily been defined, and designed as a “social responsibility” by the government and the banking industry …

Armed Response: An Unfortunate Legacy Of Apartheid, Leila Lawlor

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

After apartheid was repealed in South Africa, the country’s system of forced segregation officially ended. Vestiges of racial discrimination remain, however, including spatial segregation in housing, income inequality, and huge disparities in the government’s provisioning of basic services. The poorest of South Africa’s citizens live in peripheral communities, far from city centers and employment hubs. The poorest communities often lack safe streets and safe toilets. Whereas wealthier South Africans are able to pay private policing companies to provide armed security, those in the poorest of communities must live with regular fear of violent crime. The problem is compounded by a …

Citizen's Co-Production Of Public Safety As A Symptom Of State Failure: The Case Of South African Vigilantism, Dawid Szescilo

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

The growing interest in co-production of public services reflects the need to liberate from the dichotomy between state and market provision. Whereas the concept of co-production is not new, it gained broader recognition among public administration scholars in recent years. What is characteristic for the academic discourse on this idea, is a strong focus on the benefits of co-production such as effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness and quality of public services. This article provides more critical insight into co-production of public security by exploring the phenomenon of vigilantism in South Africa. The major aim of this article is to examine the major …

Gendered Lived Experiences In Urban Cape Town: Urban Infrastructure As Equal Opportunity, Social Justice, And Crime Prevention, Becky Jacobs

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

New Forms Of Inequality In Cape Town: A Comparative Economic And Legal Study To Defend The Right To Housing, Wellington Migliari

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Inequality has been a topic in the core of many studies about urban development. Different theories contributed enormously to innovative reflections on the 2008 global financial crisis. However, the perverse economic practices on city construction and the housing issues remain. The aim of the present article is to show how far the right to housing in Cape Town has been affected by risky real estate investments. Unemployment rates, public money being involved in the property market and mortgage system for speculative purposes are some of the dependent variables that can shed light on these new urban forms of inequality in …

Affordable Housing, Zoning And The International Covenant On Economic, Social And Cultural Rights: Some Lessons From The Spanish And South African Experiences, Juli Ponce

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.