Floods and Flooding

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Join us starting tomorrow, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 for the 34th Land Use Institute. Originally scheduled for April in Tampa, we obviously couldn’t do tha, so we did the next best thing — moved this venerable course online. The Planning Chairs (Frank Schnidman and Dean Patricia Salkin) have assembled the usual hot topics session and a lineup of expert faculty (we’re speaking at the 2:45 ET session on Federal Laws (in our case, NEPA, Water, and Wetlands (including the Maui case from SCOTUS)). 

The program takes place over three days Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and you can either register for the sessions or all three days, with various discounts if you are a member of the American Bar Association, and even more if you are a member of the Section of State and Local Government Law. 

Here’s the three-day agenda. There is a lot here to like, and we…

Continue Reading Join Us This Week: May 12-14, 2020 For (Virtual) Land Use Institute Webinar Series

Please mark your calendars for Friday, May 15, 2020 at 2:30pm Eastern Time, for the teleforum sponsored by the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group, “COVID-19 & Property Rights: Do Government Actions in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic Create Compensable Takings?”  

The issue: how should courts evaluate the claims for compensation arising out of emergency measures? This question is on the front burner at the moment (and will continue to be because the courts will likely be confronted from these type of claims as the fallout continues). For example, here are some of the complaints that have been filed in courts around the nation: see here, here, here, here and here.  

Please join the program (public welcome). It will be a moderated discussion between two experts in the area, both of whom have been following the issue closely, and who have written…

Continue Reading Join Us Next Friday, May 15 (2:30pm ET, 11:30am PT, 8:30am HT): FedSoc Teleforum: “COVID-19 & Property Rights: Do Government Actions in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic Create Compensable Takings?”

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CHALLENGE: find the “damage” on the Loretto building

Here’s the amicus brief filed today by Pacific Legal Foundation that urges the Supreme Court to grant our cert petition in a case that asks:

To constitute a taking under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, must a physical invasion also destroy or substantially impair an owner’s economically beneficial uses of property?

Yes, takings mavens, we’re talking Loretto and related. (If you want to see the truly “de minimis” invasion — and no damage — that resulted in Justice Marshall in that case concluding that the Takings Clause imposes a “categorical duty” to provide compensation for physical invasions, check out some recent photos of the Loretto building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.)

Here’s the amicus brief’s Summary of Argument:

The Fritzes’ petition for a writ of certiorari raises an important question concerning the protections provided by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment…

Continue Reading New SCOTUS Amicus Brief Highlights Govt’s “Categorical Duty” To Compensate, Even Without Substantial Damage To Remainder