Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

Promoting Urban Agriculture As An Alternative Land Use For Vacant Properties In The City Of Detroit: Benefits, Problems, And Proposals For A Regulatory Framework For Successful Land Use Integration, John E. Mogk, Sarah Kwiatkowski, Mary J. Weindorf

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

The Restitutionary Approach To Just Compensation, Tim Kowal

ExpressO

In the wake of the Court’s near-total refusal to impose a check on the legislature through the public use clause, this paper discusses whether any confidence in our property rights be restored through the just compensation clause in the form of restitutionary compensation, rather than the traditional, and myopic, “fair market value” standard. This paper discusses the historical presumption against restitution, elucidated through Bauman v. Ross over a century ago, is founded upon (1) the idea that the public should not be made to pay any more than necessary to effect a public project, and (2) the idea that the …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Who Will Redevelop Redevelopment?, Tim Kowal

ExpressO

Although California’s redevelopment law is among the strictest in the nation, from a layperson’s perspective, redevelopment agencies (RDAs) appear to be no more obstructed from their projects in California as they would be in, say, Connecticut. This article addresses a sort of “tragedy of the commons” problem applied to redevelopment: If redevelopment powers are “over-harvested” such as to instigate serious political revolt against them, they will become barren and useless, and will no longer be available for the purposes for which they were intended and for which they are still needed. Even assuming that redevelopment is efficacious and necessary, redevelopment …

Zoning And Eminent Domain Under The New Minimum Scrutiny, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

Recently the Supreme Court has made it clearer that minimum scrutiny is a factual analysis. Whether in any government action there is a rational relation to a legitimate interest is a matter of determining whether there is a policy maintaining important facts. This has come about in the Court’s emerging emphasis on developing fact-based criteria for determining government purpose. Thus, those who want to affect zoning and eminent domain outcomes should look to what the Court sees as important facts, and whether government action is maintaining those facts with its proposed land use or eminent domain action.

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Private Property, Development And Freedom, Steven J. Eagle

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

The author asserts that adherence to the rule of law, including property law, is a necessary condition to economic development and human freedom. United States governmental agencies and private institutes have attempted to convey this message to Russia, other states of the former Soviet Union, and former Soviet satellite states, with some success. Finally, and unfortunately, the United States has veered away from the very adherence to the rule of law respecting property which it espouses abroad.

Out Of Bounds: San Francisco's Homeless Policies, Alexandra Flynn

ExpressO

Homelessness, both a legal and public policy issue, has dominated the City of San Francisco government agenda for over fifteen years. Despite the front-and-center nature of homelessness, the policies enacted have done little to reduce the count. This paper, first, presents San Francisco’s new approach to the issue; namely, the creation of a new and far more limited class of “chronically homeless” persons. This first section includes an examination of the causes of homelessness, the physical alienation of homeless persons through “quality of life” laws, and recent policy initiatives used to social exclude the bulk of homeless persons by limiting …

A Common Tragedy: Promises To Benefit The Public Interest And The Enforceability Problem, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

This article examines the challenge of enforcing promises made to benefit the public, using environmental commitments such as wetland restoration as a central example. It argues that while contractual promises between private parties are routinely enforced, similar promises made to the public often fail due to lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. Drawing on Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” the paper explores how individual incentives discourage both performance and enforcement of such promises. The analysis highlights the limitations of agency resources, barriers to citizen enforcement, and the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks to ensure accountability for public benefit commitments. It …

Eminent Domain And The "Public Use": Michigan Supreme Court Legislates An Unprecedented Overruling Of Poletown In County Of Wayne V. Hathcock, John E. Mogk

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Castles In The Sand: Balancing Public Custom And Private Ownership Interests On Oregon’S Beaches, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

Although much has been written about Oregon's unique legacy of public privilege to use private beaches, scholarship has tended to focus on articulation as well as spirited critique of the custom doctrine. More recently, commentators have addressed the question of whether the public's beach rights can withstand scrutiny under the constitutional takings doctrine. In contrast, this article assumes that the custom doctrine is sufficiently embedded in Oregon's history and case law as precedent to withstand reconsideration of the doctrine and to constitute a background principle of state law for purposes of the takings doctrine. With these assumptions, the article examines …

New Public Law Legislation, Oregon Law Institute, Paul Snider, Karen M. Vickers, Lynn Rosik, Marianna Kanwit, Maria Keltner

Oregon Law Institute, 1995

Course Materials from the September 15, 1995 Program in Portland

Takings, Narratives, And Power, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"The Regulatory Takings Problem" is the title given to a story, or narrative, that has become prominent in the literature on just compensation issues. The story is one of power and fear. It is about a perceived imbalance of power between the two groups of actors involved in the process of public land-use regulation--private landowners and government regulators. It depicts scenarios of past or threatened abuse of power by local land-use regulators, and it looks to the takings clause generally and regulatory takings doctrine specifically as crucial corrective devices, essential to set the power imbalance aright. The dominant narrative describes …

Protecting The Appalachian Trail In Maine, University Of Maine At Portland - Gorham

Maine Collection

Protecting the Appalachian Trail In Maine

A Handbook Compiled by the Allagash Environmental Institute, Center for Research & Advanced Study, University of Maine Portland - Gorham, 1976.

Directed & edited by Patricia Solotaire.

Contents: The Project Itself / The History of Trail Agreements in Maine / The Landowner's Duty to Hikers and Campers / History and Description of the Statutory Protection of the Appalachian Trail / An Overview of Tax Considerations / Land Protection Devices / Using the Information / Bibliography / Footnotes / Appendices

The Public Trust Doctrine In Natural Resource Law: Effective Judicial Intervention, Joseph L. Sax

Michigan Law Review

Public concern about environmental quality is beginning to be felt in the courtroom. Private citizens, no longer willing to accede to the efforts of administrative agencies to protect the public interest, have begun to take the initiative themselves. One dramatic result is a proliferation of lawsuits in which citizens, demanding judicial recognition of their rights as members of the public, sue the very governmental agencies which are supposed to be protecting the public interest. While this Article was being written, several dozen such suits were initiated-to enforce air and water pollution laws in states where public agencies have been created …

Eminent Domain-Urban Renewal-Broader Powers To Take Private Property For Public Use, Roger L. Mcmanus

Michigan Law Review

Defendant city instituted a comprehensive urban redevelopment plan under which condemnation and purchase of blighted property would be followed by extensive demolition and clearance. This land was then to be sold subject to certain use restrictions to private developers, chiefly for light industry. Plaintiff, an owner of real estate described as "improved and enhanced with . . . a good, sound, sanitary, modem and well-kept building," brought an action in a lower state court seeking a declaratory judgment against the constitutionality of the Washington Urban Renewal Law, and an injunction to prevent defendant city from condemning his property under the …

Municipal Corporations-Master Plans-Power Of Cities To Zone For Future Conditions, Walter A. Urick

Michigan Law Review

After purchasing land which was subject to a zoning ordinance requiring a minimum lot size of 21,780 square feet, plaintiffs, real estate developers, challenged the ordinance as unreasonable and confiscatory. Defendant city argued that the ordinance was based upon a comprehensive master plan and had the purpose of limiting future density of population in accordance with sewage capacity. On appeal from the circuit court order invalidating the zoning ordinance as applied to plaintiff's property, held, judgment affirmed, three judges dissenting. A city zoning ordinance requiring a minimum lot size for the purpose of limiting future density of population in …

Municipal Corporations - Zoning - Exclusion Of Churches From Residential Area, William R. Luney S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In two recent New York cases churches sought permits to use residential property for church purposes, including worship, social gatherings, construction of an adjacent parking lot, and, in one case, establishment of a school and playground. In each case the zoning board denied the permit on grounds that a church would change the residential character of the neighborhood, decrease the enjoyment of neighboring property, depreciate property values, and that the contemplated use of the property for other than worship was prohibited by the ordinance. The lower court upheld the decisions of both zoning boards. On appeal to the New York …