Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Overcoming Poletown: County Of Wayne V. Hathcock, Economic Development Takings, And The Future Of Public Use, Ilya Somin

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

County of Wayne v. Hathcock is an important step forward in public use takings law. The Michigan Supreme Court was right to overturn its notorious 1981 Poletown decision and forbid condemnations that transfer property to private parties solely on the grounds that the new owners will contribute to “economic development.” Poletown was the best known and most widely criticized decision justifying a nearly unlimited condemnation power.

As the Poletown case dramatically demonstrates, the economic development rationale is a virtual blank check for eminent domain abuse for the benefit of private parties. Poletown upheld a condemnation as a result of which …

What Is A Tragedy Of The Commons? Overfishing And The Campaign Spending Problem, Shi-Ling Hsu

ExpressO

Over the thirty-seven years since its publication, Garden Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" has clearly become one of the most influential writings of all time. The tragedy of the commons is one of those rare scholarly ideas that has had an enormous impact in academia and is also commonly used outside of academia. In legal scholarship, the tragedy of the commons has been used to characterize a wide variety of resource problems, including intellectual property rights, overcrowding of telecommunications spectra, air and water pollution, and of course, the classic environmental commons problem, overfishing. But I suggest this embarrassment of citation …

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together: Pricing In Anticommons Property Arrangements, Ben Depoorter, Sven Vanneste

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Recently, a new theory has drawn considerable attention in the literature on common property. A number of scholars have pointed to the danger of excessive propertization in the context of what are termed "anticommons" property regimes. Although this theory has found its way into numerous legal and economic applications, the empirical and cognitive foundations of the theory of fragmentation remain unexplored. Based on experimental data, this Article conducts an investigation into the social and personal processes involved in the anticommons.

The results confirm the theoretical proposition that anticommons deadweight losses increase with the degree of complementarity between individual parts and …

“Ua Koe Ke Kuleana O Na Kanaka” (Reserving The Rights Of Native Tenants): Integrating Kuleana Rights And Land Trust Priorities In Hawai`I, Jocelyn B. Garovoy

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Police Power Revisited: Phantom Incorporation And The Roots Of The Takings Muddle, Bradley C. Karkkainen

ExpressO

This article traces the roots of the current muddle in the Supreme Court’s regulatory takings jurisprudence to an ill-considered “phantom incorporation” holding in Penn Central v. New York (1978), the seminal case of the modern regulatory takings era. The Penn Central Court anachronistically misread a long line of Fourteenth Amendment Substantive Due Process cases as Fifth Amendment Takings Clause cases, misattributing to Chicago Burlington & Quincy v. Chicago (1897) (“Chicago B & Q”) the crucial holding that the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause applied to the states. Like other cases of its era, Chicago B & Q was decided strictly on …

The End Of Notice: Secrets And Liens In Commercial Finance Law, Jonathan C. Lipson

ExpressO

This article explores important recent changes in the way that we treat personal property in commercial finance transactions. Among other things, these changes reduce or eliminate the obligation to give notice of interests in personal property when it is used in commercial finance transactions (as, e.g., collateral for a loan).

A principal purpose of notice-filing has been to deter the creation of secret liens, interests in property that are neither recorded nor otherwise readily observable. Secret liens are universally castigated as abhorrent.

Yet, two recent sets of legislative developments suggest that we may care much less about the problem of …

Secrets And Liens: Verification And Measurement In Commercial Finance Law, Jonathan C. Lipson

ExpressO

This article argues that commercial finance law increasingly uses contract rules to displace property rules, especially as these rules pertain to verifying and measuring property interests. In this context, verification simply means confirming the existence of a property interest, such as a lien or security interest. Measurement means determining the relationships of various property interests to one another (i.e., the priority of interests).

Historically, commercial finance law – in particular the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs loans secured by personal property – provided that something would be treated as “property” only if its property character was fairly easy to discover. …

From The Lighthouses: How The First Federal Internal Improvement Projects Created Precedent That Broadened The Commerce Clause, Shrunk The Takings Clause, And Affected Early Nineteenth Century Constitutional Debate, Adam S. Grace

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Beyond Reparations: An American Indian Theory Of Justice, William C. Bradford

ExpressO

The number of states, corporations, and religious groups formally disowning past records of egregious human injustice is mushrooming. Although the Age of Apology is a global phenomenon, the question of reparations—a tort-based mode of redress whereby a wrongdoing group accepts legal responsibility and compensates victims for the damage it inflicted upon them—likely consumes more energy, emotion, and resources in the U.S. than in any other jurisdiction. Since the final year of the Cold War, the U.S. and its political subdivisions have apologized or paid compensation to Japanese-American internees, native Hawaiians, civilians killed in the Korean War, and African American victims …

Legal Title To Land As An Intervention Against Urban Poverty In Developing Nations, Bernadette Atuahene

All Faculty Scholarship

One intervention intended to ameliorate poverty and its subsidiary effects is the distribution of legal title to land to poor urban dwellers, otherwise known as land titling. Given the billions of dollars that the World Bank, country-based development agencies, regional development banks, and developing countries themselves have spent on land titling programs, it has become one of the most important property law issues confronting the developing world. Several countries have undertaken comprehensive urban land titling programs to transform the dwellings of those who live in the squalor of squatter settlements into assets recognized by the formal sector. This Article accepts …

It's Personal But Is It Mine? Toward Property Rights In Personal Information, Vera Bergelson

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

"It's Personal But Is It Mine? Toward Property Rights in Personal Information" discusses the disturbing erosion of privacy suffered by the American society in recent years due to citizens' loss of control over their personal information. This information, collected and traded by commercial enterprises, receives almost no protection under current law. I argue that, in order to protect privacy, individuals need to secure control over their information by becoming its legal owners. In this article, I confront two fundamental questions that have not been specifically addressed in the privacy literature before: why property is the most appropriate regime for regulating …

The "No Property" Problem: Understanding Poverty By Understanding Wealth, Jane Baron

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Takings Formalism And Regulatory Formulas: Exactions And The Consequences Of Clarity, Mark Fenster

ExpressO

A vocal minority of the U.S. Supreme Court recently announced its suspicion that lower courts and state and local administrative agencies are systematically ignoring constitutional rules intended to limit, through heightened judicial review, exactions as a land use regulatory tool. Exactions are the concessions local governments require of property owners as conditions for the issuance of the entitlements that enable the intensified use of real property. In two cases decided over the past two decades, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994), the Court has established under the Takings Clause a logic and metrics …

Difused Surface Water: Reasonable Use Has Become The Common Enemy, Wendy B. Davis

ExpressO

Diffused surface water, caused by precipitation, should be treated as a necessary asset to replenish aquifers used for drinking water, and not as waste to be disposed of by landowners. Groundwater aquifers were created, and can only be replenished, by precipitation that is allowed to seep underground. Ninety-nine percent of the drinking water for people in rural areas of America comes from groundwater aquifers. These aquifers are in danger of being contaminated or depleted, which could result in severe water shortages very soon. Legislators have failed to enact a comprehensive system to regulate the use of aquifers, relying instead on …

The Limits Of Property Reparations, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Human history is replete with examples of unjustified expropriations of property by conquering states and other transitory regimes. Only in modern times, however, have nations attempted systematically to remedy historical injustices by providing reparations to the dispossessed owners or their successors. From the aboriginal peoples of the Antipodes to the Native Americans of Canada and the U.S. to the European victims of the German and Soviet communism, groups of people who were stripped of their land and possessions by fraud or force are demanding, and in many cases getting, reparations for these injustices. The thesis of this paper is that …

Property As A Fundamental Constitutional Right? The German Example, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This article examines an apparent paradox in comparative constitutional law. Property rights are not treated as a fundamental right in American constitutional law; they are, however, under the Basic Law (i.e., constitution) of Germany, a social-welfare state that otherwise gives less weight to property. The article uses this apparent paradox as a vehicle for considering the different reasons why constitutions protect property. It explains the difference between the German and American constitutional treatment of property on the basis of the quite different approaches taken in the two systems to the purposes of constitutional protection of property.

Cultural Property And The Limitations Of Preservation, Sarah K. Harding

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defining Traditional Knowledge -- Lessons From Cultural Property, Sarah K. Harding

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Specific Relief For Ancient Deprivations Of Property, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

I consider in this paper the extent to which courts rationally and on a principled basis can deny to aboriginal claimants, despite the ancientness of their claims, the specific relief of being restored to possession of their aboriginal lands where the case for such specific relief is otherwise made. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the foundations of property in the Western conception, then goes on to discuss the Europeans' asserted title to indigenous lands and the various theories of aboriginal title that have emerged. It then explores the past and existing legal obstacles to the judicial resolution …

Takings And Property Rights Legislation, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Over the years, regulatory takings case law has supported land use regulations by cloaking them with a presumption of validity and placing a heavy burden on their challengers of proving either that the regulation fails to substantially advance a legitimate public purpose or that it deprives the owner of all economically beneficial use of the land. Insulated in this way, regulators, on occasion, have transgressed the boundaries of fundamental fairness.

Should Taxpayers Pay People To Obey Environmental Laws?, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Should taxpayers have to pay people not to put pollutants into streams and reservoirs? Should taxpayers have to pay people not to kill off entire species? Should taxpayers have to reach into their pockets and pay people not to disperse development seamlessly across the countryside, relentlessly consuming, fragmenting, and degrading our nation's remaining natural lands until almost all is gone? Should we, in short, have to pay people not to engage in land-uses that have been determined to be too socially unacceptable to allow?

The Public Housing Tenancy: Variation On The Common Law That Give Security Of Tenure And Control, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the character of the public housing tenancy, comparing it with the common law tenancy under private lease law and evaluating the degree to which private lease law will protect the interests of low-income families if current proposals to abolish existing in-kind housing programs are adopted. Part II of this Article traces the history of federally funded housing programs and describes the various strategies employed. Part III discusses the recent changes in modern private lease law and recounts the basic rights and obligations of the landlord and tenant, which define and govern the rights of low-income families under …

Evolving Thresholds Of Nuisance And The Takings Clause, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article reviews the historical tradition in which the common law core of nuisance has been the frequent subject of statutory additions and refinements, providing most of our modern law of land use and environmental protection. Until Lucas, the Takings Clause had not been treated as a charter establishing the courts as boards of revision to rethink and selectively veto legislative determinations in the land use field. Within the scope of “total takings,” however, Lucas has converted the Takings Clause from its original meaning and made it exactly that.

Reclaiming The Public Domain By Repeal Of The Mining Law Of 1872, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper offers an analysis of the new allocation of burdens and benefits in the use of public lands as contemplated by the proposed legislation. In Part III, I discuss the acquisition of property rights under the General Mining Law of 1872. In Part IV, the theory of property in general is explained along with the types and nature of property interests inhering in, and arising from, a mining claim. I explain the recent efforts in Congress to reform the mining law in Part V and the concept of a taking of property in general in Part VI. I discuss …

"Taking" The Imperial Judiciary Seriously: Segmenting Property Interests And Judicial Revision Of Legislative Judgments, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the diversion of the Takings Clause from its historic limited role to that of a charter for courts to second-guess legislative determinations of land-use rights and wrongs. As we shall see, prior to Lucas the Supreme Court and others following its lead have generally not regarded the Takings Clause as a warrant for reaching de novo determinations on land use problems and then substituting such judicial determinations, if different, for those of the legislature. Some notable exceptions in the Claims Court and Federal Circuit will then be considered along with the ostensible Supreme Court authority, a sentence …

What Is Behind The "Property Rights" Debate?, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council' obviously presents issues that range far more broadly than just whether people should be allowed to build on beaches and dunes. Many observers have viewed the case as a splendid opportunity for the Supreme Court to re-establish private owner autonomy in land use decisions - to cut down, perhaps drastically, on elected legislatures' traditional power to protect the environment by regulating uses of land. Behind the "property rights" debate is the question of whether states and communities really ought to have the power that they have traditionally had to control the development and patterns …

Private Property Investment, Lucas And The Fairness Doctrine, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

These remarks are not intended to advocate the interests of the new property rights movement. In fact, those advocates will be disappointed by what I say. Rather, I aspire to view the issue of real property regulation as broadly as possible, reaching beyond the jurisprudence of regulatory takings cases into the realms of real estate transactions law and comprehensive land use planning.

Footprints In The Shifting Sands Of The Isle Of Palms: A Practical Analysis Of Regulatory Takings Cases, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

It was not until the last day of the term, June 29, 1992, that the Court decided Lucas. By that time, interest could not have been greater. At issue was the validity of a regulation that prohibited all permanent development of the plaintiff's two beachfront lots. The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the regulation by a 3-2 margin because it prevented a “great public harm.” The U.S. Supreme Court reversed that determination and remanded the case to determine whether South Carolina's common law of nuisance could prohibit the construction of single-family housing on the lots. The fractured Court delivered an …

Economic Due Process And The Takings Clause, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The discussion which follows will examine the new verbalizations repeatedly employed in Supreme Court takings decisions of the past decade and the Court's enlistment of the just compensation requirement as a basis for undertaking substantive review of legislation. As an introduction, the distinctive historical roles and roots of the substantive due process and just compensation requirements will be reviewed.

Constitutional Limits On The Power To Take Private Property: Public Purpose And Public Use, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The rights/freedoms dichotomy tacitly permeates Supreme Court ‘takings' jurisprudence, and it has an explanatory power which extends to virtually all ‘takings' cases decided by the Court. Its explanatory power does not, however, extend to the relatively few cases which involve the taking of ‘rights' for purely private use, that is rearrangements of existing private property rights, as opposed to takings for use by the government or its designees in some public service function. Because rearranging the existing pattern of private ownership takes ‘rights' and not mere ‘freedoms,’ we might expect, according to the rights/freedoms pattern, that the Court would uniformly …