Overharvesting: The Why Of Biodiversity Loss,
2025
University of Kansas School of Law
Overharvesting: The Why Of Biodiversity Loss, Andrew W. Torrance, Bill Tomlinson
Texas A&M Journal of Property Law
This Article examines the consequences of overharvesting biodiversity, focusing on its detrimental effects on biodiversity—on the biosphere, ecosystems, communities, populations, and individual organisms. It evaluates legal mechanisms designed to protect biodiversity from overharvesting and also considers legal mechanisms that lead to overharvesting to the detriment of biodiversity. The Article compares regulations and laws from multiple jurisdictions, including Europe, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and analyzes how these regulations and laws seek to curb overharvesting. Examples include the United States’s Endangered Species Act, Canada’s Wild Animal and Plant Protection Act, and the European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive. International conventions …
Pollution: The What Of Biodiversity Loss,
2025
University of Kansas School of Law
Pollution: The What Of Biodiversity Loss, Andrew W. Torrance, Bill Tomlinson
Texas A&M Journal of Property Law
This Article examines the damage to biodiversity caused by anthropogenic pollution at all levels—to the biosphere, to ecosystems, to communities, to populations, and to individual organisms. It also analyzes pollution control laws across the globe and their efficacy in mitigating or preventing harm to biodiversity. The analysis covers all forms of pollution—air, water, and land—that threaten biodiversity, noting both improvements and ongoing challenges in different regions. The Article provides a comparative study of diverse jurisdictions, including North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia. It scrutinizes pivotal legislation such as the United States’ Clean Air Act, the UK’s Environment Act, and the …
Invasives: The How Of Biodiversity Loss,
2025
University of Kansas School of Law
Invasives: The How Of Biodiversity Loss, Andrew W. Torrance, Bill Tomlinson
Texas A&M Journal of Property Law
Invasive species are non-native organisms, existing outside of their original habitat, which may cause damage to the biodiversity in their new environment. These species often outcompete native species for resources, which can dramatically disrupt ecological balance and biodiversity. This Article first surveys existing invasive species laws, documenting the current legal frameworks that various countries use to manage invasive species. It then proposes an array of new legal approaches that may improve how human civilizations manage the complex issues surrounding invasives. Finally, it evaluates the prospects for preventing—or even rolling back—the harm invasives cause to biodiversity. The broad goal of this …
Goodbye, Zoning?,
2025
University of Florida Levin College of Law
Goodbye, Zoning?, Michael Allan Wolf
UF Law Faculty Publications
American zoning is under attack on multiple fronts. The concerns of zoning's many critics range from social and racial justice, to private property rights, to the extreme shortage of affordable housing, to climate-change resilience and sustainability. A growing number of voices have called for, at a minimum, the elimination of single-family zones; some even champion the abolition of this ubiquitous method of American land use regulation. This Article is the first detailed look at what would happen if zoning's critics got their way. The most efficient means for erasing zoning from American law would be for the U.S. Supreme Court …
Misusing Eminent Domain: Pretextual Takings For A Traditional Public Use,
2025
Fordham University School of Law
Misusing Eminent Domain: Pretextual Takings For A Traditional Public Use, Cameron P. Hellerman
Fordham Law Review
Eminent domain is a powerful tool at the disposal of local, state and federal governments. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution imposes two conditions on this sovereign power: the taking must be for “public use,” and the condemner must pay “just compensation” to the property owner. There are minimal guardrails in place to police potential misuse of the eminent domain power in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court equates “public use” with “public purpose” and applies a deferential standard of review to a condemner’s determination that a taking serves a public purpose. Nonetheless, the Court in Kelo v. City …
Municipal Overreach: The Case Against Benefit-Based Land Use Exactions,
2025
Brooklyn Law School
Municipal Overreach: The Case Against Benefit-Based Land Use Exactions, Michael Krasna
Brooklyn Law Review
In the Summer of 2023, a quiet buzz was building in New York City that Madison Square Garden’s Special Permit—the land use vehicle that allows it to operate an arena— was in jeopardy. Contributing to the hubbub were discussions about a controversial form of land use regulation: benefit-based exactions. Exactions are requirements imposed on property owners by local governments whereby, in return for a discretionary land use approval, property owners dedicate a portion of their property to further the government’s interest or pay a fee in lieu thereof. While exactions are primarily used by a municipality when a new development …
Aerial Highways: The Fifth Amendment Implications Of Commercial Drone Delivery Services,
2025
Brooklyn Law School
Aerial Highways: The Fifth Amendment Implications Of Commercial Drone Delivery Services, Marc C. Mcallister, Karen A. Sauls
Brooklyn Law Review
Commercial drone delivery systems that deliver packages of purchased products directly to the homes of consumers are being developed and tested by many companies in America, including Walmart and Amazon. Soon enough, our skies will be filled with low-flying drones. This Article joins the growing cohort of legal scholars discussing drones, but focuses on an issue not addressed to this point - how commercial drone delivery systems can undermine and diminish the property rights of private landowners. In the past, most legal scholars have addressed the interplay between drones and private property by examining potential tort liability for drone operators …
Heirs' Property Disputes: Evaluating Adr Forums To Change The Status Quo,
2025
Pepperdine University
Heirs' Property Disputes: Evaluating Adr Forums To Change The Status Quo, Karina Grobman
Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal
Heirs’ property—a form of communal ownership passed down through generations—is a symbol of family legacy in the South. Disputes between families and developers create a disparate loss of land among Black families in the South, often through court-ordered partition actions. Although some states adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) to reform partition sales, most courts still force sales of the entire property rather than more equitable divisions. This Comment explores various alternative dispute resolution (ADR) forums as a more just and efficient path to resolve heirs’ property disputes. Although the multi-party nature of heirs’ property disputes makes …
Special Benefits And Just Compensation: Ensuring Fair Treatment Of Landowners In Partial Taking Cases,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Special Benefits And Just Compensation: Ensuring Fair Treatment Of Landowners In Partial Taking Cases, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
The sovereign power to take private property for public use is counterbalanced by the duty to provide just compensation. The just compensation requirement is intended to protect the individual landowner when the government exercises its right of eminent domain. Consistent with the equitable principle of fairness upon which this requirement is founded, the government must provide the individual with public funds for property transferred from his private use to the public domain. The just compensation requirement thereby distributes the costs of public projects equally among all members of society and ensures that no individual whose property is sacrificed for the …
Maine's Public Lots: The Emergence Of A Public Trust,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Maine's Public Lots: The Emergence Of A Public Trust, Lee M. Schepps
Maine Law Review
Maine's public lots were originally reserved from conveyances of townships of public domain and were held by the state for the benefit of schools in the towns which would or could someday be created among the unorganized townships of the state. Many towns came into existence and inherited their public lots for the purposes for which the lots were reserved. Unlike many other states, however, almost half of the land area of Maine has never been incorporated into towns. Because of the great number of townships which have never been incorporated into towns, there are now approximately 400,000 acres of …
Cancer Alley: Solutions For Effective Regulation And Enforcement Of Air Pollution,
2025
Seattle University School of Law
Cancer Alley: Solutions For Effective Regulation And Enforcement Of Air Pollution, Lisa Lee
Seattle Journal for Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Title to realty generally passes by sale, by devise or by descent. Each method of transfer through its respective system of rules and requirements seeks to protect the interests of society as well as the interests of the immediate parties to a transfer of ownership. When a sale, as an inter vivos transfer, follows a transfer of realty by either devise or descent, a gap may appear in the protection afforded to the various parties by each system of rules. Specifically, the purchase of estate realty from a distributee under probate or administration may jeopardize the purchaser's status as owner. …
Time-Share Condominiums: Property's Fourth Dimension,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Time-Share Condominiums: Property's Fourth Dimension, David R. Dubord
Maine Law Review
Time-shared ownership of condominiums is a concept which, though virtually unheard of in this country ten years ago, has now gained a foothold in America's real estate market. Essentially, time-sharing involves the division of ownership of a condominium into a number of fixed time periods during which each purchaser has the exclusive right of use and occupation. While condominium ownership itself is an ancient and well-established method of joint property ownership, what is novel about time-sharing is the division of joint ownership rights into binding periods of exclusive use and possession. The methods of creating time-shared interests are varied and …
The Constitutionality Of Maine's Real Estate Mortgage Foreclosure Statutes,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
The Constitutionality Of Maine's Real Estate Mortgage Foreclosure Statutes, Kathleen Barry
Maine Law Review
In Maine, Fuentes v. Shevin caused understandable concern about the constitutionality of the state statutes governing real property mortgage foreclosures. Of the foreclosure procedures existing in 1972, only one provided for impartial determination by a court of the mortgagor's breach of condition. In response to Fuentes, the Maine Legislature in 1975 enacted a straightforward provision for foreclosure by civil action. Although the constitutionality of Maine's pre-1975 foreclosure statutes under the fourteenth amendment has not been litigated, lenders in Maine's largest city have recently abandoned all methods of foreclosure except foreclosure by civil action. Lenders, debtors, and legislators in Maine would …
Securing Solar Access In Maine,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Securing Solar Access In Maine, Martha Freeman
Maine Law Review
This Comment explores the common law property concepts of nuisance, water law, and easements which arise by operation of law in order to determine the kind and degree of solar access protection they can provide Maine residential users of solar energy. The final section of this Comment proposes an express solar easement by which Maine citizens can create their own enforceable interests in unobstructed sunlight for solar energy use. In highly urbanized areas where space is scarce and already developed, the conflicts between solar energy users and other land and airspace users may be too difficult to resolve. In Maine, …
Maine's Action To Try Title: A Proposal For Statutory Reform,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Maine's Action To Try Title: A Proposal For Statutory Reform, Eve Hlavatý Cimmet
Maine Law Review
Maine law provides three distinct statutory proceedings to try title: the real action, an action at law to quiet title, and an action in equity to quiet title. As the preceding Comment demonstrates, the present statutory scheme preserves outmoded distinctions between law and equity that are functionally obsolete in modern civil practice. Although the statutory law governing actions to try title in most states is, like Maine's, a patchwork product replete with archaic concepts, several other states have consolidated legal and equitable remedies into simple, comprehensive statutory actions. This Comment proposes a similar statute for Maine in the interest of …
Maine's Actions To Try Title: A Historical Perspective,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Maine's Actions To Try Title: A Historical Perspective, Gregory W. Powell
Maine Law Review
Actions to try title are commonly used by Maine lawyers to adjudicate real estate title conflicts. Though often time consuming, expensive, and complicated, such actions are necessary in any state that seeks to foster a stable, economically efficient real estate market. Actions to try title have been necessary in all states because no protective statutory scheme for land titles has ever succeeded in eliminating all title defects that interfere with quiet possession or salability. Maine is no exception. Until a more effective statutory scheme for securing titles and restoring land's marketability becomes available, actions to try title will remain important …
Coastal Recreation: Legal Methods For Securing Public Rights In The Seashore,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Coastal Recreation: Legal Methods For Securing Public Rights In The Seashore, Jeffrey D. Curtis
Maine Law Review
The coastal shores of the United States are a peculiar form of property in that both the littoral landowner and the general public have legally protected interests in the use and enjoyment of the land. In most coastal states the title to the land below the high-water mark is vested in the state in trust for the beneficial use of the public, subject to certain limited rights of the littoral owner. Maine and Massachusetts, however, share a unique allocation of public and private interests which vests the title to the foreshore, the land between the high and low water marks, …
The Dilemma Of Local Land Use Control: Power Without Responsibility,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
The Dilemma Of Local Land Use Control: Power Without Responsibility, Orlando E. Delogu
Maine Law Review
Land use planning and control has traditionally been perceived as a set of issues best dealt with by local government. State governments historically have been called upon to provide nothing more than a suitable framework of planning and land use control enabling legislation. In recent years some states have sought to address land use issues having regional or statewide impact. This has usually been done on an intra-state basis, however, and meaningful interstate or multi-state approaches to land use problems, though much discussed in the literature, are almost non-existent in practice. Federal involvement in land use issues has also been …
Mortgage Lending Discrimination: A Barrier In The Land Of Opportunity,
2025
University of the District of Columbia School of Law
Mortgage Lending Discrimination: A Barrier In The Land Of Opportunity, Paul Campbell
University of the District of Columbia Law Review
This note discusses the problem of mortgage loan discrimination in America. In January 2021, mortgage rates in America were the lowest in history at 2.65%. Around this time, there was a high demand for housing throughout the country. Yet in 2022, 26% of Black applicants had mortgage applications denied. Mortgage loan discrimination continues to be a barrier for African American homeownership. However, this barrier can be overcome by supporting nonprofit organizations and community banks, creating a new federal agency which provides reparations and guaranteed mortgages, and passing the Fair Access to Financial Services Act.
