Here’s the recording of last week’s oral arguments in Comm’n on Ethics of the State of Nevada v. Carrigan, No. 10-568 (cert. granted Jan 7, 2011).
Stream the arguments below, or download the 25mb mp3 here.
The written transcript is available here. The merits and amici briefs are available here.
We’re writing up a summary of the arguments, and we’ll post it soon.Continue Reading Oral Arguments In Ethics Case
The ABA State & Local Government Law Section has just published a new book, Whose Drop Is It Anyway? Legal Issues Surrounding Our Nation’s Water Resources, edited by Megan Baroni. I just received my copy.
Skimming through the chapters, it looks worthy of a place on the bookshelf as a practical guide to a very wide range of issues related to water.
Here are the details:
Whose Drop Is It, Anyway? Legal Issues Surrounding Our Nation’s Water Resources, is a valuable resource and practical tool discussing the legal issues surrounding water resources and the current issues and trends that are influencing the legal regimes. Practical in use, this book can be used as a tool for developing effective water management strategies in your own jurisdictions.
As scarcity issues become more common and threats like global climate change loom with uncertainty over our water resources, water only stands to
People can get passionate about their pets. We understand that. And, as we’ve mentioned before, we appreciate creative lawyering. We really, really do. But sometimes — to paraphrase Justice Holmes — seeing a taking lurking in everything can “go too far.”
Here’s the latest example. In Concerned Dog Owners of California v. City of Los Angeles, No. B218003 (Apr. 29, 2011), the California Court of Appeal held that it was not a taking for the city to require pet owners to spay or neuter their animals. The pet owners raised a host of constitutional challenges, including a takings claim. The court rejected all of them:
CDOC argues that by threatening to cause a pet to be altered without the owner‘s permission, the City threatens an unlawful “taking” and that “sterilization reduces the value of the dog or cat, as well as takes the property right of the ability to
Continue Reading Cal Ct App: Taking Your Pet’s Family Jewels Is Not A “Taking”
As we predicted in a recent article, the Supreme Court’s latest takings decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (June 17, 2010) has been “a boon for academics who may continue the search for the ‘takings quark’ (if not woodchucks) in the pages of law journals.” Adding to the growing list of scholary takes on the case — sorry, we could not resist the pun — is Georgetown lawprof J. Peter Byrne who has posted Stop the Stop the Beach Plurality!, a forthcoming article to be published by the Ecology Law Quarterly.
Comparing Stop the Beach Renourishment to Bush v. Gore, the article — the tone of which is worthy of a Scalia dissent and is entertaining reading even if you don’t buy his analysis — makes no effort to hide his disdain for the plurality opinion. Professor
Heading to court today, so haven’t had time to review this yet, but here’s the just-released transcript in today’s oral arguments in Comm’n on Ethics of the State of Nevada v. Carrigan, No. 10-568 (cert. granted Jan 7, 2011).
We previewed the arguments here.Continue Reading Oral Argument Transcript In SCOTUS Ethics Case
This just in: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 7-1 that when a District Court lawsuit and a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims are based on the same operative facts, the CFC has no subject matter jurisdiction. United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, No. 09-846, (cert. granted Apr. 19, 2010).
Although it involves claims of breach of trust on Indian land, the case is of interest to property lawyers, since the CFC is the court that has exclusive jurisdiction to consider claims for just compensation agains the federal government claims in excess of $10,000.
The opinion is available here.
Justice Kennedy authored the majority opinion, and only Justice Ginsburg dissented. Justice Kagan recused. Disclosure: we filed an amicus brief supporting the Nation.
More, after a chance to read the opinions.
United States v Tohono Oodham Nation, No. 09-846 (Apr 26 2011)
Tomorrow (April 27, 2011), the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Comm’n on Ethics of the State of Nevada v. Carrigan, No. 10-568 (cert. granted Jan 7, 2011). In that case, the Court is considering whether a state statute that requires elected officials to recuse themselves from considering matters on which they appear to have conflicts of interest impermissibly infringes upon a city councilman’s First Amendment rights.
The Court will confront the issue of whether an elected official’s vote in a quasi-judicial matter is protected “speech,” and what standards courts should apply when ethics laws are challenged under the First Amendment. The Nevada Supreme Court invalidated its state’s ethics law which required a Sparks, Nevada city councilmember to recuse himself from considering an application to develop a hotel/casino because the developer’s “consultant” was a “longtime professional and personal friend” of the councilmember, and had been his campaign
The petitioners have filed their reply brief in Guggenheim v. City of Goleta, No. 10-1125 (petition for cert. filed Mar. 11, 2011), the case involving California mobile home park owners who are asking the Court to review the decision of a sharply divided en banc Ninth Circuit which held that Goleta’s mobile home rent control ordinance did not work a regulatory taking under Penn Central because the Guggenheims purchased their mobile home park after it was rent regulated. Disclosure: we filed an amicus brief in the case in support of the property owners.
The reply brief responds to the City’s BIO, and argues:
Instead of defending the Ninth Circuit’s decision on its own terms, the City rewrites it. According to the City, the Ninth Circuit conducted a fact-intensive Penn Central analysis that did not turn solely on the fact that petitioners had purchased the mobile-home park after the
If you are wondering why the doors to most state, county, and city offices are locked today, remember that it isn’t another “furlough Friday,” or the day HGEA is voting on its new contract. No, today is the day that Hawaii celebrates Good Friday.
If you ask how “a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary” squares with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, let us explain O Unenlighted One. Here’s our annual recounting of the how’s and the why’s.
Good Friday is a legal holiday in the State of Hawaii pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. § 8-1. The day of the crucifixion was originally made a holiday in 1941 by the Territorial Legislature. The statute was recodified upon statehood in 1959, and the holiday has been confirmed via Haw. Rev. Stat. § 89-1,
Continue Reading Hawaii’s Good Friday Holiday – What’s Up With That?
Here are the final four briefs in Comm’n on Ethics of the State of Nevada v. Carrigan, No. 10-568 (cert. granted Jan 7, 2011). In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether a state statute which requires elected officials to recuse themselves from considering matters on which they appear to have conflicts of interest impermissibly infringes upon a city councilman’s First Amendment rights.
As we wrote in this month’s Zoning & Planning Law Report, this case is worth following since if the Court adopts the scrict scrutiny rationale of the Nevada Supreme Court (which invalidated Nevada’s ethics laws under the First Amendment), all similar conflict-of-interest laws could be subject to similar — and quite often “fatal” — scrutiny.
The Court will hear oral arguments next week, Wednesday, April 27, 2011.
