Land Use Law Commons^™

To Apply Or Not To Apply? That Is The Question Of Intergovernmental Zoning, Jillian M. Nobis

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

2017 Survey Of Rhode Island Law: Cases And Public Laws Of Note

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

U.S. Supreme Court Surveys: 2016 Term. Murr. V. Wisconsin: Identifying The Proper "Parcel As A Whole" In Regulatory Takings Cases, Bruce I. Kogan

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

U.S. Supreme Court Surveys: 2016 Term. Murr. V. Wisconsin: Identifying The Proper "Parcel As A Whole" In Regulatory Takings Cases, Bruce I. Kogan

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

R.I.P. To Rluipa: The Ongoing Debate Of Rluipa As Applied To Local Cemetery Ordinances Is Finally Laid To Rest, Alexandra C. Rawson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Israel's Absentee Property Law: When Is Democratic Failure Necessary?, Bria Smith

CMC Senior Theses

This paper defends Israel's expropriation of property under the Absentee Property Law within the state’s pre-1967 borders on constitutional grounds, but holds that the Law’s increased use in the region of East Jerusalem is invalid under Israel's constitutional scheme. This distinction turns upon the state’s application of the Law for necessary purposes. I hold that Israel’s justification for breaching human rights explicitly protected must be based on the state’s need to preserve its foundational ideology and national purpose in times of extra-normal circumstances. Israel may act undemocratically only to the extent imperative to preserve the Jewish nation and the existence …

The Green Economy: Strategic Planning For A Future?, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

While the green economy is uniquely dependent on imagination, it is not imaginary. While it needs ideas to grow, it is not necessarily ideological. The term “green economy” brings to mind for many people wind turbines and solar energy installations, and, perhaps, organic produce and free-range chickens as well. All these usages convey the sense of “sustainability.” The use of the term “green” -- long associated with growth and life -- is in keeping with the term “sustainability” as articulated in the 1987 United Nation Brundtland Report, entitled Our Common Future. The report defines the term “sustainability” as “meeting the …

Bicycle-Friendly Policies, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

A review of Copenhagenize by Mikael Colville-Andersen

One Parcel Plus One Parcel Equals A "Parcel As A Whole" Murr V. Wisconsin's Fluid Calculations For Regulatory Takings, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Court's most recent major property law case, Murr v. Wisconsin, 137 S. Ct. 1933 (2017), tackles one of the thorny, recurring issues in regulatory takings jurisprudence: what is the proper “denominator” to use in determining whether a government regulation has so greatly diminished the economic value of a parcel of land that it effects a taking? More specifically, Murr looked at what constitutes the “parcel as a whole” when a landowner holds title to two contiguous lots. Should a court assess the economic impact on the value of each lot separately or the impact on the value of the …

A Historical Reassessment Of Congress's "Power To Dispose Of" The Public Lands, Jeffrey M. Schmitt

School of Law Faculty Publications

The Property Clause of the Constitution grants Congress the “Power to Dispose” of federal land. Congress uses this Clause to justify permanent federal land ownership of approximately one-third of the land within the United States. Legal scholars, however, are divided as to whether the original understanding of the Clause supports this practice. While many scholars argue that the text and intent of the framers show that Congress has the power to permanently own land within the states, others contend that these sources demonstrate that Congress has a duty to dispose of all federal land not held pursuant to another enumerated …

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

Journal Articles

Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual …

An Independent Review Of Forest Practices In Nova Scotia: Executive Summary Conclusions And Recommendations, William Lahey Prof.

Reports & Public Policy Documents

My mandate was to make recommendations on forest practices that would, if implemented, balance environmental, social, and economic objectives, which I have interpreted to include values. My conclusion is that environmental, social, and economic values should be balanced by using forest practices that give priority to protecting and enhancing ecosystems and biodiversity.

In other words, I have concluded that protecting ecosystems and biodiversity should not be balanced against other objectives and values as if they were of equal weight or importance to those other objectives or values. Instead, protecting and enhancing ecosystems should be the objective (the outcome) of how …

Non-Enforcement Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

The non-enforcement of existing property laws is not logically separable from the issue of unfair and unjust state deprivations of property rights at which the Constitution's Takings Clause takes aim. This Article suggests, therefore, that takings law should police allocations resulting from non-enforcement decisions on the same "fairness and justice" grounds that it polices allocations resulting from decisions to enact and enforce new regulations. Rejecting the extant majority position that state decisions not to enforce existing property laws are categorically immune from takings liability is not to advocate that persons impacted by such decisions should be automatically or even regularly …

Moral Rights: The Anti-Rebellion Graffiti Heritage Of 5pointz, Richard H. Chused

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Localized Density On Housing Prices In Singapore, Eric Fesselmeyer, Kiat Ying Sky Seah, Jonathan Ci Yi Kwok

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper measures how localized residential density impacts housing prices in Singapore. Using exogenous variation in residential density, we find that an increase in density causes non-trivial decreases in property values: a 10% increase in density decreases price per square foot by between 1.3% and 2%. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first paper to measure this effect.Further, we find that the negative effect of density is biggest in magnitude for low density apartment projects and the magnitude is decreasing in the density of the project, and that the negative effect of density is increasing in magnitude …

Sink Or Sell: Using Real Estate Purchase Options To Facilitate Coastal Retreat, Richard T. Henderson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Despite the political contention surrounding climate change, scientists almost universally agree that sea levels are rising and will continue to do so. In light of this inevitability, commentators and policymakers have begun to recognize that retreat-the withdrawal of people and development from coastal areas will become necessary, at least in certain areas. Even so, many still question the viability of retreat given the exorbitant economic, political, and legal costs it generally faces. In particular, hardline opposition to retreat runs strong among many coastal landowners. This Note introduces a device for implementing retreat with the potential to overcome these obstacles: real …

Understanding The Lagos State Properties Protection Law, 2016, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Land is a crucial component of development. This is more so in a place like Lagos State, Nigeria's economic capital, where there is a far greater demand for the asset than nature bestows. The State has for decades endured a damaging form of criminality widely known as land grabbing. This menace manifests itself in various ways, some of which are outlined in this article. The Lagos State Properties Development Law 2016 (“the Law’ or ‘PPL”) aims to curtail unwholesome and unscrupulous land transactions and practices in the State by prescribing strong criminal sanctions against violators. This paper examines the essence …

Rewired Infrastructure Post-Paris, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

The Trump Administration announced in 2017 that it is withdrawing the U.S. from the international Paris Agreement regarding climate change which went into full effect in 2016. More than half the states sued the EPA when it promulgated the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce power sector carbon emissions by 32 percent by 2030; thereafter, the Supreme Court stayed enforcement of the regulation, pending eventual review on the merits. The Trump Administration began efforts to repeal the Obama Administration CPP which was designed to satisfy the U.S. Paris Agreement commitments to curb CO2 emissions from burning coal to generate electric …

Whose Lands? Which Public? The Shape Of Public-Lands Law And Trump's National Monument Proclamations, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

President Trump issued a proclamation in December 2017 purporting to remove two million acres in southern Utah from national monument status, radically shrinking the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument and splitting the Bears Ears National Monument into two residual protected areas. Whether the President has the power to revise or revoke existing monuments under the Antiquities Act, which creates the national monument system, is a new question of law for a 112-year-old statute that has been used by Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama to protect roughly fifteen million acres of federal land and hundreds of millions of marine acres. …