Property Law and Real Estate Commons^™

Teaching Applied Sustainability: A Practicum Based On Drafting Ordinances, Jonathan Rosenbloom, John C. Dernbach

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article describes and explains a sustainability law practicum class that is now taught in only two law schools, but which has considerable teaching and practical value. It also explains how this class is consistent with, and furthers, the growing demand for experiential, skills-based legal education employing formative assessment. The class uses a real-world setting to provide students with skills they will need to help clients meet their sustainability goals. These skills include applying the principles of sustainable development in specific contexts; researching local government law; drafting legislation and ordinances; giving short presentations; and counseling clients. These skills are developed …

An Idea Whose Time Has Gone: How Amortization Is Unconstitutional Retroactive Legislation In Texas, William R. Maurer

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

This Article discusses what amortization is, why municipal governments use it, and how the courts of Texas and other states have treated the practice. Next, this Article argues that, while Texas courts have routinely approved amortization, many exercises of the power are likely unconstitutional under Texas’s prohibition on retroactive civil legislation and that it violates due process. Lastly, this Article concludes with a call for Texas courts to reexamine the constitutionality of this oppressive practice and do away with it once and for all.

The Limits Of Creativity In Copyright: Digital Manufacturing Files And Lockout Codes, Lucas S. Osborn

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

As the distinction between the digital and physical worlds continues to diminish, the necessity to reevaluate the bargain struck by the copyright regime increases in importance. Digitization brings increasingly more aspects of our world into the potential ambit of the copyright system. To understand whether and how the copyright system should apply in an increasingly digital world, it is first necessary to understand doctrinally how current copyright laws apply to new digital works. This Article corrects several errors that have appeared in the literature analyzing copyright law’s treatment of 3D printing and other digital manufacturing files. This Article incorporates an …

Well Enough Alone: Liability For Wrongful Foreclosure, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

Part I of this Article both sets the stage for the current environment, in which banks and their officers and directors are under the spotlight and face an increasing amount of pressure due to their perceived role in the instigation of the Great Recession, and then examines in detail improvident lending and wrongful foreclosure, two of the wrongful acts banks have committed in connection with our current financial crisis that have generated a substantial amount of public interest and comment.

Part II examines the potential of officer and director liability for these disparate elements of the Great Recession, looking first …

Equitably Housing (Almost) Half A Nation Of Renters, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

America’s population of renters is growing faster than the supply of available rental units. Rental vacancies are reaching new lows, and rental rates are reaching new highs. Millions of former homeowners have lost their homes in foreclosure and, due to today’s much tighter mortgage underwriting realities, will not realistically re-enter the ranks of owner-occupants. For a number of reasons – variety of incomes, different stages in life, and a range of personal preferences and lifestyles – homeownership is not for everyone. And yet federal government housing policy has consistently prioritized homeownership over renter-specific issues, such as affordability and rental supply …

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

Faculty Publications

Fifty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed a hope that someday people of all races would “live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing.” Residential patterns in America today, however, remain highly segregated by race and income. The Fair Housing Act outlawed overt housing discrimination and unjustified discriminatory impacts, but zoning laws and housing finance structures have continued to impede housing integration, leaving communities nearly as racially homogenous as they were in the mid 20th century. These separate neighborhoods are far from equal. The majority of people who reside in financially distressed city-center neighborhoods are …

The Real Doctrine & Covenants, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

Developers have recently begun creating, and attaching to the property they sell to consumers, what is known as a "recovery fee." These recovery fees are "new" in that most lawyers are not familiar with them and in that they seem to operate in a novel manner and are bottomed on novel claims. In essence, they create and levy a fee on subsequent owners each time the property is transferred, which fee purports to reimburse developers for infrastructure and other development costs. Because they seem new, and because they involve transfers from relatively small and unsophisticated parties to relatively large and …

Property As Prophesy: Legal Realism And The Indeterminacy Of Ownership, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Property law, like all law, is indeterminate. This means that ownership itself is indeterminate and every owner is vulnerable to challenges based on unexpected legal rules or newly created ones. Even the most seemingly secure rights can be defeated or compromised if a clever-enough lawyer is retained to mount a challenge. The casebooks used in first-year property courses are full of examples. In the case of particularly valuable property, such as works of art, the motivation to fashion arguments to support ownership challenges is obvious. Short and strictly interpreted statutes of limitations can mitigate the risks to ownership by cabining …

Augmenting Property Law: Applying The Right To Exclude In The Augmented Reality Universe, Samuel Mallick

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note considers whether and to what extent the property right to exclude applies to virtual space in the augmented reality (AR) universe. It provides an overview of AR's development and uses, as well as a review of property law concerning the right to exclude. By considering the consequences of previously proposed regulatory schemes in light of four hypothetical AR applications, this Note demonstrates that these solutions do not adequately balance the societal benefit achievable through free development of AR applications with landowners' absolute rights to exclude others from their property. This Note proposes adoption of an adjusted "open-range" common …

Legal Issues In Ip Protection For Additive Manufacturing, Sharon Flank

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Additive manufacturing (“AM”) offers the power to design and create in new ways but also brings challenges in intellectual property protection and unauthorized copying, along with potential liability issues. One growing problem is counterfeiting, which is recognized as part of a worldwide industry estimated at over $1 trillion. “There are two basic paths to creating counterfeits with 3D printing.” First, the print instructions, in the form of a software design file, can be stolen, shared, or mocked up. Alternatively, an existing object “(including a genuine branded or licensed product)” can be 3D scanned to create a design file to print …

Making Existing Homes Greener, James Charles Smith

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

During the past two decades, a “green building movement” has emerged, at first concentrating on the “greening” of government and commercial building. More recently, the focus has turned to the greening of residential buildings. “Green homes” are increasingly popular in the United States and throughout the world. They consume less energy; reduce environmental impacts; and conserve land, water, and other natural resources. Now, thousands of homebuyers are willing to take into account green environmental considerations when making home purchase decisions. They are motivated economically (the prospect of lower utility bills) and altruistically (doing what is good for the environment).

Printing The Future: The Implications Of 3d Printing, Timothy R. Holbrook

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

What I am going to talk about today is sort of an aggregation of a lot of things I have already published, or am thinking about, that relates to how 3D printing challenges our patent system and how the patent system could respond doctrinally now and, in other ways, that we could theorize we could do. We should be frightened about some of those steps, however. I will then discuss some of the consequences that flow from these arguments. And so, I will skip through some of the earlier slides as to 3D printing. I think people know what that …

Water Valuation And Utility Rates, Amy Hardberger

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

As I’ve worked on this topic, it really has evolved. I was thrown into land use, but land use opened my eyes to new water tools. Nationwide there is a shift towards conservation of water and water sustainability. Land use might be the “ace-in-the-hole,” not the simple act of turning the water off when you brush your teeth—even though I want you to do that.

What’s important when talking about how we are going to survive, is “where are we going?” Because cities are so overpopulated, we are moving out of rural areas and into cities. This has caught the …

Chapter 838: Foreclosing Preventable Foreclosures For Closure: Successors In Interest, Gary Menes

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chapter 758: Density Bonus Fast Track, Kevin Duewel

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chapter 701: Protecting Low-Income Families Burdened By Property Taxes, Jessica Wellington

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Talking Foreign Policy: Art, Diplomacy And Accountability, Milena Sterio, Mark Ellis, Shannon French, Bill Schabas, Paul R. Williams, Michael P. Scharf

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a one-hour radio program, hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Co-Dean Michael Scharf, in which experts discuss the salient foreign policy issues of the day. Dean Scharf created Talking Foreign Policy to break down complex foreign policy topics that are prominent in the day-to-day news cycles yet difficult to understand.

This broadcast featured:

• Paul R. Williams, President and cofounder of the Public International Law & Policy Group, who has advised parties to treaty negotiations around the world
• Mark Ellis, Executive Director of the International Bar Association
• Bill Schabas, a professor at Middlesex University …

Beach Law Cleanup: How Sea-Level Rise Has Eroded The Ambulatory Boundaries Legal Framework, Alyson C. Flournoy

UF Law Faculty Publications

As the sea level rises, the boundaries between privately owned coastal property and sovereign submerged lands held in public trust are becoming increasingly contested. The common law doctrines that determine these boundaries under conditions of change—primarily accretion, erosion, reliction, and avulsion—have important implications for all those involved in adaptation planning along our coasts. This includes private owners of coastal property, local government officials seeking to develop and implement adaptation strategies, beachgoers seeking to use shrinking beaches, beach-tourism-dependent businesses, and courts facing cases involving boundary disputes at the water’s moving edge. This paper raises the questions of whether and how the …

Arkansas Airspace Ownership And The Challenge Of Drones, Lindsey P. Gustafson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Armed Response: An Unfortunate Legacy Of Apartheid, Leila Lawlor

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.