Land Use Law Commons^™

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

Rights-Weakening Federalism, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines whether federalism protects land rights in China from two dimensions. I first compare national law with local institutions of eminent domain, revealing that local governments take much more land than the national government approves, frequently violating, tweaking, and challenging national law. I next examine the impact of interjurisdictional competition on the development of local land institutions, demonstrating that local governments are weakening individual land rights for the benefits of mobile capital. Overall, Chinese federalism weakens rather than strengthens individual land rights and should be called rights-weakening federalism.

This China case also has general theoretical implications. Leading property …

Foreword: Introduction To Decentralization And Development, Shitong Qiao, Richard A. Epstein

Faculty Scholarship

On March 14–15, 2017, a group of Asian and American scholars working in the areas of law, economics, and political science gathered at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. There they debated and discussed decentralization and development at a conference co-sponsored by New York University’s Classical Liberal Institute and the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law’s Centre for Chinese Law. What does decentralization mean? How do we best measure decentralization? Is interjurisdictional competition a race to the bottom or a race to the top? Is decentralization desirable in the context of China and other jurisdictions? This symposium …

Incentive Compatible Climate Change Mitigation: Moving Beyond The Pledge And Review Model, Gabriel Weil

Scholarly Works

Climate change represents a global commons problem, where individuals, businesses, and nation-states all lack sufficient incentives to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels consistent with meeting their collectively agreed upon mitigation goals. The current "pledge and review" paradigm for global climate change mitigation, which many see as a major breakthrough, relies primarily on moral pressure, reputational incentives, and global public opinion to foster cooperation on mitigation efforts over and above those driven by maximization of narrow conceptions of national interests. Given the scale of the emissions reductions required to meet stated mitigation goals, the substantial economic costs of deep …

Super Problems In Superstar Cities, Michael Lewyn, Beth Gazes

Scholarly Works

Review of Richard Florida's The New Urban Crisis

Explaining Market Urbanism, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Compares Market Urbanism to New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism

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

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Herr V. U.S. Forest Service, Peter B. Taylor

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Herr v. U. S. Forest Service, the Sixth Circuit ruled on whether the Forest Service could infringe on pre-existing private property rights held adjacent to a designated Wilderness Area. The Herrs purchased lakefront property adjacent to the Sylvania Wilderness in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the intention of using their littoral rights for recreational boating. The Sylvania Wilderness was created under the Michigan Wilderness Act in 1987, but the Act observed valid existing rights. The court found that the Herrs’ littoral rights were recognizable “valid existing rights.” Therefore, the Forest Service’s restriction of those rights was illegal.

Comments On The World Bank’S Draft Guidance Note For Borrowers Ess5: Land Acquisition, Restrictions On Land Use And Involuntary Resettlement, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In December 2017, CCSI sent comments to the World Bank regarding its Draft Guidance Note for Borrowers ESS5: Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement.

CCSI’s overarching comments on the Guidance Note were that:

• Its description of affected persons and their rights contradicts and undermines international consensus on land governance supported by the Bank
• It fails to provide any guidance on when involuntary resettlement should be considered unavoidable or how Borrowers can prioritize project designs that actually minimize displacement or other harms
• It fails to put rights-holders (or “affected stakeholders”) at the center of solutions
• Its discussion of …

At The Intersection Of Land Grievances And Legal Liability: The Need To Reconsider Contract Rights And Expectations At The Supranational Level, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This Article explores how host governments’ legal obligations can affect or constrain their ability to address “land grievances,” which are defined as concerns raised by local individuals or communities in response to negative impacts of land-based investments. Obligations under international investment law, international human rights law, and investor-state contracts can be in tension or can directly conflict with one another, creating complexity for governments seeking to respond to land grievances. To explore the legal considerations that governments must navigate in this context, this Article considers several options that governments could pursue to respond to land grievances. In all of the …

Some Model Amendments To Maine (And Other States') Land Use Control Legislation, Orlando E. Delogu, Sam Merrill, Philip R. Saucier

Maine Law Review

This model legislation consisting of ten separate provisions is intended to clarify and/or expand existing Maine law dealing with planning and land use regulation. It expands existing statutes by addressing a number of issues not presently covered by law. The overarching purpose of the proposed legislation is to underscore that planning and the imposition of land use regulations is not exclusively the responsibility of local governments but instead is a shared duty of the state and local governments. This is clearly stated in the text and commentary of Provision I, and is a theme that pervades all ten legislative proposals. …

Will Bell V. Town Of Wells Be Eroded With Time?, Sidney St. F. Thaxter

Maine Law Review

In 1989, the Maine Law Court issued a landmark decision regarding the ownership of the land between the mean high-water mark and the mean low-water mark (the intertidal zone) in a case entitled Bell v. Town of Wells.1 This decision was controlled, in part, by the 1986 decision in the same case. Bell I was decided following an appeal by the plaintiff-landowners from the lower court decision dismissing Counts I and II of their Complaint as “barred by sovereign immunity.” The lower court found that “the State has an interest in Moody Beach and in that sense it has title,” …

The Impact Of The Tobacco Buyout On The Commonwealth's Open Spaces: Protecting Open Land By Expanding The Scope Of Use Value Assessment, Mary Atkinson

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Striking An Equitable Balance: Placing Reasonable Limits On Retroactive Zoning Changes After Kittery Retail Ventures, Llc V. Town Of Kittery, Heather B. Sanborn

Maine Law Review

Thirty years ago, a developer who wanted to build a shopping center had to do little more than obtain a building permit to go forward with the project. Today, however, the regulation and review of development projects involves a lengthy process of securing a series of permits, often including site plan or subdivision approvals, traffic studies, and environmental impact reviews. Navigating this review process forces developers to negotiate with the community and design their projects to fit the applicable standards adopted by the local, state, and federal regulations, arguably improving the quality of development in our communities. But the lengthy …

Clean Air Council V. Pruitt, Oliver Wood

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a motion for summary vacatur against the Environmental Protection Agency after environmental groups challenged the agency’s reconsideration of the Obama-era methane rule under the Clean Air Act. The court held that the EPA unlawfully issued a stay after it reconsidered the rule without proper authorization. The court vacated the EPA’s stay, one example of the Trump Administration unsuccessfully repealing Obama-era rulemaking.

Itenant: How The Law Should Treat Rental Relationships In The Sharing Economy, Matthew Rosendahl

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Side By Side: Revitalizing Urban Cores And Ensuring Residential Diversity, Andrea J. Boyack

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Linchpin Approaches To Salvaging Neighborhoods In The Legacy Cities Of The Midwest, Shelley Cavalieri

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freeing The City To Compete, James J. Kelly Jr.

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Natural Capital Crisis In Southern U.S. Cities, Blake Hudson

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.