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According to “Moats dug around Chinese villagers’ houses to drive them out,” they’re now resorting siege tactics to deal with holdout “nail houses” in southern China:

Forced evictions and land disputes are a major cause of social unrest in China, where there are tens of thousands of mass incidents each year.

This week, Chinese internet users weighed in on the unusual tactics being used to force Yangji’s remaining families from their homes.

“The property developer is really smart,” wrote one micro-blogger.

“The idea of natural moats is shockingly unprecedented. Really clever!”

Actually, the idea of a moat is very precedented. It appears that the situation we’re familiar with, where they merely build roads around holdouts, is devolving. What’s next, siege engines and cauldrons of boiling oil?Continue Reading They’re Getting Positively Medieval On Holdout “Nail Houses”

Worth listening: a 17-minute podcast by Professor Richard Epstein, with his thoughts — apparently without a script and seemingly in a single breath — on the oral arguments in Koontz v. St Johns River Water Mgmt Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. granted Oct. 5, 2012). 

Download the mp3 here. If that doesn’t work, go here.

Continue Reading Epstein’s Podcast On Koontz: “The Vexed Doctrine Of Unconstitutional Conditions”

What we’re reading today:

  • Grand Central Station and The Takings Clause – from the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, a link to a WNYC/NPR podcast about Grand Central Terminal and the Penn Central takings case. Worth listening, if only to hear the money quote near the end: “you see New Yorkers all the time staking claim in this building, pointing up at cerulean blue sky saying ‘hey, this belongs to us.'” Yes, we guess it does. And you know what? You didn’t pay for it.
  • Another one about the 100th anniversary of Grand Central: Gideon Kanner writes Calling All Grand Central Junkies!, linking to the NY Times‘s republication of its 1913 special celebrating the opening of the terminal.
  • In that vein, a snarky commentary about the wonders of Pennsylvania Station. Who needs a cerulean blue sky?
  • In what reads more like a redeveloper’s press release, the Washington Post

…
Continue Reading Wednesday Round-Up: Grand Central, Oysters No More, And Originalist Takings

Here’s the Federal Circuit’s Order for additional briefing in the Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v. United States case. As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier reversed the Federal Circuit’s conclusion that government-induced flooding could not be a taking because it was not “permanent, ” and remanded the case to the Federal Circuit for more.

Now that the Supreme Court has rejected that per se rule of no liability, the Federal Circuit must “weigh carefully the relevant factors and circumstances” in the case (to quote the Supreme Court describing the task) and determine whether the flood damage that occurred was a taking under the new, multi-factor test set out in the Court’s opinion:

  • “[T]ime is indeed a factor in determining the existence vel non of a compensable taking”
  • Was the flooding “temporary and unplanned” and a result of “exigent circumstances?”
  • “[T]he degree to which the invasion is intended or

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Continue Reading Fed Cir: More Briefing On Arkansas Game & Fish

Here’s the inevitable reaction to U. Hawaii law Professor David Callies’ recently-published law review article (and follow-up interview) about the stunning success rates certain parties enjoy in the Hawaii Supreme Court. In that article, the good professor labeled the record of the 1993-2010 Hawaii Supreme Court on property issues “appalling,” so it should come as no surprise that two of the beneficiaries of those rulings have now rallied to that court’s defense.

In “Hawaii Court Upholds Public Responsibility In Environmental Cases,” an opinion piece in Honolulu Civil Beat, an Earthjustice lawyer and the Director of the Hawaii Sierra Club jointly write:

Callies complains that the Supreme Court “created out of whole cloth” the requirement that the Turtle Bay Resort supplement its 25-year old Environmental Impact Statement. He was on the losing end of that argument before the Court, and he’s still wrong now. Supplemental EISs are…

Continue Reading The Empire Strikes Back: Reaction To UH Lawprof’s Study Of Success Rates In Hawaii Supreme Court Cases

Does the editorial board of the New York Times really have the stones to start off its latest editorial about the Takings Clause, “Where Is the Taking?“, with this:

When a city condemns private property to make way for a public highway, that is a classic “taking” for which government must provide “just compensation” under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

Seriously, Times? How about when it’s not a “classic” taking, and the city condemns an entire block of urban private property to make way for the 52-story office headquarters of a large corporation … say, for example, a newspaper with the initials “NYT?” Would it be a “classic” exercise of power to use emient domain to take property so that:

A high rise office tower would be built at Site 8 South providing the Times with a new headquarters, as well as providing 700,000 square feet of space…

Continue Reading We Can Try To Understand The New York Times’ Effect On Man (When It Opines On Eminent Domain Law)

Mark your calendars for next Friday, January 25, 2013 from noon to 1:00 p.m. Pacific for “Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States: Practical Implications Of The Supreme Court’s Decision,” presented by Law Seminars International.

It’s a discussion of Arkansas Game, the decision in which the Supreme Court held that the federal government was not immune from liability for a taking when it was responsible for flooding, even if the flooding is temporary. They’ve assembled a great faculty, which includes arguing counsel for the prevailing petitioner James Goodhart. Also speaking will be takings litigator Nancie Marzulla and Washington Legal Foundation Chief Counsel Richard Samp. Here’s a description of the one-hour program:

On December 4, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, holding that when the federal government floods property, even temporarily, the Fifth…

Continue Reading Upcoming TeleBriefing On Takings Issues After Arkansas Game & Fish

In addition to our summary of and reaction to yesterday’s oral arguments in Koontz v. St Johns River Water Mgmt Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. granted Oct. 5, 2012), here is the leading commentary from other sources:

  • Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog: “The very idea that an unconstitutional “taking” had occurred to an owner of a small plot of ground in Florida seemed near to vanishing, propelled toward oblivion by a spreading fear on the bench that maybe the entire regulatory apparatus of government might be at risk. Credit lawyers for a state agency and the federal government for deepening this anxiety.”
  • Greenwire‘s Lawrence Hurley: Supreme court: Justices weigh Fla. property rights dispute: “Rather than focus on the two Supreme Court precedents on permitting conditions, some justices seemed to agree with the Obama administration that, if Koontz did have a claim, it would be in the form of

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Continue Reading The Good, The Bad, And The Scalia: Koontz Oral Argument Round-Up

Okay, all you “relevant parcel” mavens, here’s another decision for you (once again involving land in Florida, although, unlike the other case which came out of the Florida court of appeals, this one is out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) .

These decisions provide a measure of sanity to the issue of how much of the property owned by the plaintiff is included when determining whether value has been wiped out under Lucas, or the extent of the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant under Penn Central. These tests require an analysis of the impact of the regulatory action on the “parcel as a whole,” and since Penn Central first made the inquiry relevant, the courts an litigants have been trying to figure out the “denominator” — is it everything the plaintiff owns? Everything nearby? Everything it once owned? The discrete…

Continue Reading Federal Circuit: Denial Of Permit To Fill Wetlands Might Be A Taking

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When you are a property owner making a takings argument and Justice Scalia gives you a hard time at oral argument, you would be safe in thinking that you’ve got an uphill battle.

That was the situation today during the oral argument (transcript here) in Koontz v. St Johns River Water Mgmt Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. granted Oct. 5, 2012), the case in which the Court is considering whether the “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” standards of Nollan and Dolan are applicable only to exactions for land, or whether they are generally-applicable tests for all exactions.

Justice Scalia, author of the Nollan opinion, did not seem all that concerned with the second Question Presented (whether only exactions of real property are subject to Nollan/Dolan), but more on whether a takings claim can be based on an excessive exaction attached to a permit when the property…

Continue Reading SCOTUS Arguments In Monetary Exactions Case: (Sliced) Bread And Circuses