October 2011

Next week, power adapters and internet connectivity permitting, we’ll be blogging from the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference at the Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.

Admin note: We’ve added “Brigham-Kanner Conference” as a separate category to catalog the posts related to the Conference. In order to read all of the posts under this topic, go here.

A property rights conference in the PRC? Should be interesting.

Here‘s the agenda and the list of sessions.

The honoree this year is Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The speakers include the past winners of the B-K prize, Frank Michelman, Richard Epstein, James Ely, Margaret Jane Radin, Robert Ellickson, Richard Pipes, and Carol Rose. In addition to these luminaries in the property law and property rights field, the speakers include the top property law scholars and practitioners in the U.S. (Alan Ackerman, Andy Brigham, Jim Burling, David Callies…

Continue Reading Blogging From Beijing: The Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference

Hawaiiimmigrationlawyer.com

No, it’s not another land use blog as you can tell from the title.

But it is another blog by a law firm colleague, one of the best in the immigration and naturalization business, David McCauley.

David joins the other Damon Key bloggers, Mark Murakami (hawaiioceanlaw.com), Tred Eyerly (insurancelawhawaii.com), and Rebecca Copeland (Record on Appeal).

Pretty soon, we’ll have the entire firm blogging. Check it out here. Continue Reading New Blog To Follow: Hawaii Immigration Lawyer

Yes, you read that right.

Yesterday, we posted most of the amici briefs in Sackett v. EPA, No. 10-1062, the case in which Idaho property owners are asserting their right to challenge the EPA’s assertion that a portion of their land are “wetlands.” But we saved one for a separate post, because it was worth noting on its own. The State of Hawaii has joined eight other states and signed onto the amici brief authored by Alaska, and this brief has a distinct property rights flavor to it.

As the Alaska Governor’s press release (“Alaska Files Brief Supporting Property Rights”) notes, the signatories are “supporting the right of property owners to have access to the courts for meaningful judicial review of arbitrary federal compliance orders.” As regular readers of this blog surely must know, the Hawaii government isn’t exactly known as being property rights friendly. And the other…

Continue Reading State Of Hawaii To SCOTUS: Protect Property Rights From “Overreaching Federal Regulation”

Wade-front-page-small Thanks to the folks at the Environmental Law Institute, who have allowed us to reprint an article from a recent Environmental Law Reporter by William W. Wade, Ph.D., a resource economist with the firm Energy and Water Economics (Columbia, Tennessee). Bill is a frequent author and speaker on the Penn Central issue, and he’s brought much needed clarification to an often confusing issue.

In Sources of Regulatory Takings Economic Confusion Subsequent to Penn Central, Mr. Wade writes:

The Federal Circuit Cienega X decision imposes insufficient financial analysis of Penn Central’s two economic prongs to satisfy either economic practice or the Penn Central test. The decision’s imposed change in value measurement evaluates only one prong of the Penn Central test. Change in value satisfies the economic impact prong but does not establish severity of the economic impact vis-à-vis frustration of distinct investment-backed expectations (DIBE). Mere diminution is well-known…

Continue Reading Article: Sources of Regulatory Takings Economic Confusion Subsequent to Penn Central

Last week, the petitioners filed their merits brief in Sackett v. EPA, No. 10-1062, the case in which Idaho property owners are asserting their right to challenge the EPA’s assertion that a portion of their land are “wetlands.”

A multitude of amicus briefs have been filed to support the Sackett’s arguments. We haven’t had the time to review each brief yet, but here they are for your review:

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Continue Reading Amicus Briefs In Sackett v. EPA: Judicial Review Of A Claim Of Regulatory Jurisdiction

Some day, the Court will grant cert in another eminent domain case.

But today is not that day.

The Court declined to review C & J Coupe Family Ltd. P’ship v. County of Hawaii, No. 11-75, the petition that asked, after Kelo, when is eminent domain pretextual? We represent the petitioner, and after the case did not show up on last week’s grant list the handwriting was on the wall. But today’s order list made it official.

This makes at least the third pretext petition denied by the Court, meaning the lower courts will continue to flounder about searching for clues in the Kelo majority opinion’s language for the correct standard to assess whether a condemnor’s asserted reason for a taking is a pretext to private benefit, and ask whether Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion means much of anything. Until the Court establishes a standard, any hope of…

Continue Reading Cert Denied In Pretext Case