Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Water Litigation In The Lower Rio Grande, Darcy S. Bushnell

Water Matters!

The water allocation issues are hotly contested in south-central New Mexico and the surrounding area. Today, the river and those who depend on it face more administrative challenges in the face of shrinking water supplies and increased population. These challenges have given rise to two ongoing lawsuits: the Lower Rio Grande Adjudication,New Mexico v. EBID, et al., 96-CV-888 (1996) (N.M. v. EBID) in the New Mexico Third Judicial District Court (adjudication court) and the New Mexico v. United States,et al., D.N.M. 11-CV-691 (2011) (N.M. v.U.S.) in United States District Court of New Mexico (U.S. District Court).

Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System (Ute Pipeline Project), Jerold Widdison, Paul Van Gulick, Darcy S. Bushnell

Water Matters!

The Ute Pipeline Project (Project), officially known as the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System (ENMRWS),is a 151-mile-long pipeline project to provide a sustainable municipal and industrial water supply for several eastern New Mexico communities and a military base. The Congress authorized major federal funding for the Ute Pipeline in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. This important milestone for the project was reached after about 45 years of effort.Attention now shifts to myriad details involved in actually constructing, financing,and administering the project.

The Rio Grande As An International River, Margaret J. Vick

Water Matters!

The Rio Grande is divided into two major river reaches and has different legal regimes for each. New Mexico is primarily concerned with the Rio Grande from the headwaters in Colorado to Ft. Quitman in Texas, a distance of approximately 670 miles. This section of the river is the subject of the1906 Rio Grande Convention (Treaty) between the United States and Mexico. The lower section of the Rio Grande from Ft. Quitman to the Gulf of Mexico is the subject of the 1944 Rivers Treaty between the United States and Mexico; the 1944 Rivers Treaty also includes the Colorado and …

Sharing The Wealth, James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

This review of the textbook, "Community Economic Development Law" (Aspen 2013), written by Susan Bennett, Brenda Bratton Blom, Louise Howells and Deborah Kenn, appeared in the Vol. 22, No.1 issue of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Economic Development Law.

Paying Paul And Robbing No One: An Eminent Domain Solution For Underwater Mortgage Debt, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners — those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth — is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to carry out, since loan modifications on the scale necessitated by the housing market crash would require collective action by a multitude of geographically dispersed security holders. The solution, this study suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up and restructure underwater mortgages, …

Governmental Conservation Easements: A Means To Advance Efficiency, Freedom From Coercion, Flexibility, And Democracy, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

Over the past twenty-five years, courts and commentators have recognized and upheld conservation easements as an important vehicle to preserve natural and ecologically sensitive land, focusing primarily on easements held by nonprofit organizations (NPOs). During the same period, courts and commentators have supported property rights of owners against governmental land use regulation. This paper maintains that these two independent developments militate for the increased use of consensual conservation easements by governmental entities to achieve public land preservation goals. Governmental conservation easements can realize the benefits of efficiency, consent and free choice, and conservation, while avoiding the coercion implicit in public …

A Federalist Blessing In Disguise: From National Inaction To Local Action On Underwater Mortgages, Robert C. Hockett, John Vlahoplus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

While it is widely recognized that the mortgage debt overhang left by the housing price bubble and bust continues to operate as the principal drag upon U.S. macroeconomic recovery, few seem to appreciate just how locally concentrated the problem is. This paper takes the measure of the national mortgage debt overhang problem as a cluster of local problems warranting local action. It then elaborates on one form of such action that the localized nature of the ongoing mortgage crisis justifies - use of municipal eminent domain authority to purchase underwater loans, then modify them in a manner that benefits debtors, …

Think Twice: Charging Orders And Creditor Property Rights, Chad J. Pomeroy

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Property Jurisprudence Of Justice Kennedy, John G. Sprankling

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Panel Iii: Politics And The Public In Ip & Info Law Policy Making, Michael J. Burstein, Derek Khanna, Jessica Littnan, Sherwin Siy, Richard S. Whitt

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Emperor's New Loans: A Cautionary Tale From The Subprime Era, David J. Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Redeeming Transect Zoning?, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

Thanks to the growing influence of the new urbanists- a group of architects aid urban-planning professionals who promote the development of mixed-land-use neighborhoods- "transect zoning" is becoming the zoning reform du jour. Over the last few decades, the new urbanists have mounted a remarkably successful public-relations campaign against traditional zoning practices and the suburban land use patterns that they mandate. The new urbanists' case against zoning is part antisuburban polemic and part pro-urban philosophy. At heart, the new urbanists' claim is that cities are good for us-and suburbs are bad. Or, to put the claim into social-science terminology, the new …

Mezzanine Debt And Preferred Equity In Real Estate, Andrew R. Berman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Short-Term Solution: Addressing How Inner-City Children Can Overcome The Consequences Of Housing Segregation And Education Segregation, Jacqueline Pena

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Ownership And Obligations: The Human Flourishing Theory Of Property, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Private property ordinarily triggers notions of individual rights, not social obligations. The core image of property rights, in the minds of most people, is that the owner has a right to exclude others and owes no further obligation to them. That image is highly misleading. Property owners owe far more responsibilities to others, both owners and non-owners, than the conventional imagery of property rights suggests. Property rights are inherently relational, and because of this characteristic, owners necessarily owe obligations to others. But the responsibility, or obligation, dimension of private ownership has been sorely under-theorised. Inherent in the concept of ownership …

A Presence Of The Past: The Legal Protection Of Singapore’S Archaeological Heritage, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore is not well known for its archaeological heritage. In fact, chance finds in the early 20th century and systematic archaeological excavations since the 1980s conducted at sites around the Singapore River have unearthed artefacts shedding light on the island’s early history. In addition, the value of archaeology for a deeper knowledge of Singapore’s British colonial past is increasingly being recognized. Nonetheless, Singapore law provides only a rudimentary framework to facilitate archaeological investigations and protect cultural artefacts. This article considers how the National Heritage Board Act (Cap 196A, 1994 Rev Ed), the Planning Act (Cap 232, 1998 Rev Ed), and …

From Space-Off To Represented Space, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home, author Anita Hill explores some of the literal and figurative meanings of "home," focusing specifically on African-American women in their quest for home. Hill layers discussions of law, literature, and culture with stories of individual women, both historic and contemporary. In Reimagining Equality, Hill takes on a topic clearly distinct from the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings, the episode for which she is best known. Her work here is, nonetheless, evocative of her struggle in those hearings, because the book addresses the interrelation between gender, race, place, space, …

Learning How To Fish: Catch Shares And The Future Of Fishery Conservation, Jonathan H. Adler, Nathaniel Stewart

Faculty Publications

The hard choices being made in an effort to save the Atlantic cod fishery today are all too common, as policymakers continue to employ and rely upon failed conservation policies, leaving fisheries the world over poorly managed and under stress. By some measures, a majority of exploited fisheries are depleted or in decline. Even more troubling, new research suggests that those fisheries about which scientists know the least may be in the worst shape. Yet all is not lost—perhaps not even for the great Atlantic cod. These same assessments conclude that, with proper management, fishery yields could double while remaining …

Restituting Nazi-Looted Art: Domestic, Legislative, And Binding Intervention To Balance The Interests Of Victims And Museums, Katharine N. Skinner

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The Nazis engaged in widespread art looting from Holocaust victims, either taking the artwork outright or using legal formalities to effect a transfer of title under duress. Years later, US museums acquired some of these pieces on a good-faith basis. Now, however, they face lawsuits by the heirs of Holocaust victims, who seek to have the museums return the artwork. Though good title cannot pass to the owner of stolen property under US law, unfavorable statutes of limitations, high financial hurdles, or discovery problems, among other obstacles, bar many of these claimants from seeking recovery. Though some museums have amicably …

Supra Synopses, Ryan W. Dumm, Laura Turczanski

Seattle University Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

0814: C. H. Freeman Collection, 1877-1977, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Papers related to the C.H. Freeman estate. Zubah and C.H. Freeman had many investments such as the Yawkey and Freeman Coal Company and the Freeman Estates. This collection contains contract agreements for property purchases of the Estates, a contour map of what seems to be the Freeman’s country residence, and correspondences between Zubah and realtors. This collection also houses some of Zubah’s family documents including old letters, registers of visitors from Klingel-Carpenter Mortuary, and Paul and Ricky Ray’s basketball documents.

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

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 …

Contested Shore: Property Rights In Reclaimed Land And The Battle For Streeterville, Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Land reclaimed from navigable waters is a resource uniquely susceptible to conflict. The multiple reasons for this include traditional hostility to interference with navigable waterways and the weakness of rights in submerged land. In Illinois, title to land reclaimed from Lake Michigan was further clouded by a shift in judicial understanding in the late nineteenth century about who owned the submerged land, starting with an assumption of private ownership but eventually embracing state ownership. The potential for such legal uncertainty to produce conflict is vividly illustrated by the history of the area of Chicago known as Streeterville, the area of …

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

Exploring Taxation As A Substitute For Overregulation In The Development Process, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

No abstract provided.

Qualified Conservation Restrictions: Recollections Of And Reflections On The Origins Of Section 170(H), Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

It has been over thirty years since Congress added to the Internal Revenue Code section 170(h), which allows a deduction for contributions to charity of “qualified conservation restrictions,” commonly known as “conservation easements”. That provision was adopted over the objections of the Treasury, who had expressed reservations of both a conceptual and practical nature about the legislation, which the Treasury viewed as more than ordinarily vulnerable to abuse. I was invited to participate in this symposium, not because I have any expertise in working with these restrictions—I don’t—but to provide some perspective on what might have motivated the Treasury thirty-plus …

“I’M Not Quite Dead Yet!”: Rethinking Anti-Lapse Redistribution Of A Dead Beneficiary’S Gift, Eloisa Rodriguez-Dod

Faculty Publications

Anti-lapse statutes create a category of substitute takers when a beneficiary prematurely dies. They are based on the legislature’s presumption of how a testator or settlor would want his property distributed in these circumstances. However, a testator’s or settlor’s intent may effectively be frustrated by this presumed intent.

This Article critically examines the tension between an individual’s autonomy and societal goals in the context of anti-lapse statutes applicable to wills and trusts. It scrutinizes the current rules of construction regarding anti-lapse statutes and identifies their deficiencies in their application to wills and trusts. This Article analyzes and identifies the deficiencies …