2011

We break from our Brigham-Kanner Conference programming to bring you this development. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued its first post-Tohono O’Odham Nation v. United States opinion, Trusted Integration, Inc. v. United States, No. 2010-5142 (Oct. 14, 2011), involving the Court of Federal Claims’ subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1500.

Haven’t had a chance to read it yet to see if there’s anything there of interest to takings lawyers, but thought we’d post it up just in case. Continue Reading Federal Circuit: First Post-Tohono O’odham CFC Jurisdiction Opinion

Most interesting comments at tonight’s event awarding the Brigham-Kanner prize to Justice (Ret.) Sandra Day O’Connor were the remarks by the Dean of Tsinghua Law School.

“When you amended your Constitution for the first time,” he noted, “you protected things such as speech. When China amended its Constitution for the first time, we protected property.”Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Conference: In China, Property Rights Are In The First Amendment

Live blogging the second day of the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference from the moot courtroom at Tsinghua Law School, Beijing PRC.

Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference – Live Blog Second Day

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The Moot Court room

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Shen Weixing, Dean and Law Professor

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Professor Wang Liming

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Mark (Thor) Hearne

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The audience

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Professor Michelman

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Professors Epstein, Jiang, and Michelman

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Professor Ely

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Professors Michelman and Salkin

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Professor Jiang

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Dean Shen, Joe Waldo

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Professor Jie

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Alan Ackerman

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Group photo from the audience point of view.
We’ll post the group photo later.

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Professor Alexander

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A professional photographer is taking shots for the record.
Until those are made available, you will have to settle for ours.

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Professor Hui

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The Moot Courtroom at the law school is very wired.

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A full transcript is being recorded, and will be available.

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Professor HuiContinue Reading Brigham-Kanner Conference Photos

We’re live at the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference in Beijing.

Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference – Live Blog

Last week, after the welcome reception at the U.S. Embassy celebrating the Brigham-Kanner Conference’s visit to Beijing and the awarding of the B-K prize to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, I had a chance to meet up with an old law school classmate and friend, Laurence Brahm.

Since our graduation nearly a quarter-century ago, Laurence has led a life that can best be described as “interesting” (as in “may you live in interesting times”), and he has not followed the usual lawyer career path. Lawyer, filmmaker, hotelier, economic advisor, philanthropist, author, futurist, and restaurateur, among many others. Over drinks and dinner at his retro-kitschy Red Capital restaurant (now that is the PRC I remember!), we caught up and Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Conference: An Evening With An Old Friend

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The actual conference does not begin until tomorrow (see schedule here), but today is the warmup. Starting with a tour of the Forbidden City, the U.S.’s leading property law scholars and practitioners joined about 50,000 other people (it seemed), and took the obligatory look-see.

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These days, it hardly seems “forbidden.” To anyone. It felt like 1/2 of the population of Beijing was there. Most definitely a change from the last time I was here.

Tonight is the reception at the U.S. Embassy in honor of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. I won’t be able to bring you any photos of the event. For security reasons, the Embassy forbids (there’s that word again) cameras, mobile phones, and similar. If we’re lucky, an official photographer will be there and I can cajole him into letting us access a photo or two.Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Conference Warmup

At a conference and awarding of a prize named in part in his honor, we lead off with the thoughts on Professor Gideon Kanner from his Gideon’s Trumpet blog on how the People’s Republic of China is dealing (or not) with the whole “property rights” thing:

Now, it would not be a Gideon Kanner commentary without some provocative thoughts:

And so it goes. Still, be all that as it may, we experience a feeling of revulsion whenever we come across this sort of thing, where American law that is said to be of the people’s government that is the embodiment of due process, fairness and equity, turns out in some ways to be not all that much different than the…

Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Conference: Professor Kanner’s (First) Thoughts