Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

The Section 1031 Qualified-Use Requirement, Bradley T. Borden

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Green Dev., Llc V. Town Of Exeter, 297 A.3d 931 (R.I. 2023)., Liz Harvey

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

The Legal Crisis Within The Climate Crisis, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

Climate change creates a difficult choice for property owners and governmental officials alike: Should they invest in costly climate adaptation measures or retreat from climate-exposed areas? Either decision is fraught with legal uncertainty, running headfirst into antiquated legal doctrines designed for a more stable world. Climate impacts to the coastline are forcing policymakers to consider four adaptation tools: (1) resisting climate impacts by building sea walls and armoring the shoreline; (2) accommodating those impacts by elevating existing structures; (3) managed retreat such as systematically and preemptively moving people out of harm’s way; and (4) reactively moving people to new locations …

Urban Commons In Italy, Michele Graziadei

FIU Law Review

The Italian experience with urban commons has been very rich indeed. In the last ten years or so the number of social and legal initiatives relating to urban commons in Italy has exploded. The present Italian situation shows that urban commons are here to stay. By now, they are part of the collective imagination, of political and socio-economic transformative projects, of administrative practices, and of the law. The demand for the commons in the city originates from the social movements that intend to resist the penetration of the market and of private property in every ambit of life but is …

Minnesota Rebalances Long-Standing Contract-For-Deed Law, Larry M. Wertheim

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

The Exceptional Dead: Human Remains As Property, Non-Property, And Cultural Property In Armed Conflict, Ronald Alcala

American University Law Review

International humanitarian law mandates that the dead must be respected and protected in armed conflict. Among other things, parties to an armed conflict must ensure that the dead are treated with dignity and that their bodies are not despoiled, pillaged, mutilated, or otherwise maltreated. Not all human remains located on the battlefield, however, will have a direct nexus to the fighting. Some, like those of Prince Grigory Potemkin, a historical figure whose bones were seized by Russian forces from a Ukrainian church in 2022, might even pre-exist an ongoing conflict. Whether rules applicable to the dead apply to such remains …

Taking A Step Back: Have We Already Seen Judicial Takings?, Anna Sargent

American University Law Review

In Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Justice Scalia’s plurality opinion held that the Takings Clause is not addressed to a single government actor, but rather applies to all government actions, including those effected by the judicial branch. Consequently, regardless of which branch affects the taking, just compensation is required. Despite promulgating the existence of judicial takings, the Court then went on to say that no established property right was “taken” for Fifth Amendment purposes. Without an application or a clear-cut delineation, Justice Scalia’s promulgation of judicial takings was rendered as merely advisory to …

Law And Literature In Pennsylvania: A Changing Landscape, Juliette Gaggini

Honors Theses

This thesis examines themes of American national identity perpetuated in Pennsylvania surrounding private property through historical, literary and legal analysis. Ideals of private property and land ownership are broken into three transitions throughout Pennsylvania history: the American frontier and initial land claiming by settlers, mass-deforestation and the introduction of widespread agriculture, and finally industrialization and the introduction of mining and fracking. Each of these transitions highlights the physical changes to the region and how they were influenced by American ideals of private property, productivity, and profitability.

Throughout this thesis, I analyze both literary and legal texts to examine societal beliefs …

Investigating Appraisal Discrimination, Carol Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past five years, the question of whether real estate appraisers systematically undervalue homes purchased or occupied by Black and Hispanic households has emerged as a significant civil rights issue. Major media have highlighted some instances where the same home received a dramatically higher appraisal when the appraiser believed the client was white rather than Black. Some social scientists have argued that appraisal discrimination is the root cause of the lower housing prices that prevail in many urban minority neighborhoods— and thus an important source of the racial “wealth gap.” Candidate Biden expressed strong concern about the issue during …

From Redlining To Greenlining, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

For generations, marginalized communities have been impacted by discriminatory land use, zoning, and property valuation policies, from redlining in the 1930s to the siting of undesirable land uses that persists today. Because of these policies, marginalized communities are forced to contend with low property values, substandard infrastructure, and increased health risks. The very same mechanisms that created these injustices, however, may now be key to addressing them. This Article introduces “greenlining” as a land use planning mechanism that seeks to remediate historical housing, siting, and economic disparities while forging a path toward energy and environmental justice. Greenlining, the productive and …

Montaquila V. Flagstar Bank, Fsb, 288 A.3d 967 (R.I. 2023)., Joseph R. Forcino

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping The Perpetual In Florida's Conservation Easements, Nancy A. Mclaughlin

FIU Law Review

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in the protection of the Florida Wildlife Corridor and other environmentally sensitive lands. One of the primary tools being used to accomplish this protection is the perpetual conservation easement, which is touted to landowners and the public as providing a permanent guarantee that the subject lands will never be developed. There is a very real danger, however, that perpetual conservation easements in Florida may not, in fact, be perpetual, and the protections put in place today will vanish over time—along with the public funds invested therein—as government and nonprofit holders “release” the …

Sacred Easements, Patrick E. Reidy, C.S.C.

Journal Articles

In the last forty years, Native American faith communities have struggled to protect their sacred sites using religious liberty law. When confronting threats to sacred lands, Native Americans stridently assert constitutional and statutory free exercise protections against public authorities. But unlike litigation involving non-Indian religious property, cases involving sacred sites seek to protect land that tribal faith communities do not themselves own. Because they lack an explicit ownership interest, Native Americans struggle to protect their sacred sites from desecration and destruction. Courts asked to weigh Indian religious liberty claims against non-Indian property claims always side with the landowner. Since sacred …

Churching Nimbys: Creating Affordable Housing On Church Property, Patrick E. Reidy, C.S.C.

Journal Articles

In recent years, faith communities across the United States have begun to create affordable housing on church property, inspired by sincerely held religious beliefs. Some are building microhomes behind their houses of worship. Others are converting residences once used by religious ministers—from rectories to abbeys to convents—into units for seniors and low-income families. Still others are repurposing their vacant schools, church parking lots, and undeveloped parcels of land for denser multifamily structures, from townhouses to apartment buildings. Within housing-advocacy circles and among faith communities, these continent-wide efforts to create affordable housing on church property have manifested an affirmative declaration: “Yes, …

Fire And Federal Power: Defining The “Furthest Reaches” Of The Property Clause, Brett Lingle

Emory Law Journal

Wildfires pose an immense and escalating threat to national forests. In addition to rising temperatures and accumulating fuels, rapid development of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) has exacerbated wildfire risk by putting more people and property in harm’s way and increasing the likelihood of human-caused fires. While restrictions on WUI development would reduce wildfire risk, varying political and economic pressures have caused substantial variation in how local governments regulate the WUI. Some governments have implemented stringent regulations, while others have permitted unbridled expansion. Such disjointed regulation acutely impacts national forests because WUI homes and communities are often clustered around them. Thus, …

The Transmogrification Of Moratoria In Support Of Rent Regulations: False Steps To Affordable Housing, Shelby D. Green

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.