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We just completed a fun hour-long talk with the students in the William and Mary Law School’s American Constitution Society, the Native American Law Society, and the Society on Environmental and Animal Law about the various pipeline cases that are ongoing nationwide. (If our tech worked, we shall post the audio recording in a future post.)

The theme of our talk was that these cases are an excellent illustration of the need for lawyers to think outside their usual lanes when it comes to addressing and solving their clients’ problems, because they present a smorgasbord of legal issues that range from property and eminent domain law, to administrative law, constitutional law, state and local government law, environmental law, federal courts, and civil procedure. 

The lawyers who are litigating these cases have done a good job of not being bound by convention and thinking creatively. They are thankfully analyzing the cases

Continue Reading Cases And Materials From Today’s WM Law ACS Talk: “Pipelines at the Intersection of Environmental, Administrative, and Property Law: How Divergent Interests Joined Forces To Challenge Big Energy”

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Update: here’s a report (video included!) about our spring “field trip” to what arguably is the birthplace of a “more perfect union” (which just happens to be right down the road from William and Mary Law School).

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This semester, we’re teaching a short course at William and Mary Law School (and yes, thanks to a willing administration and student body, we will be back in the fall for the “big” Eminent Domain and Property Rights course). 

The title of the spring class is “No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding,” and the focus of the course is the book by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz from which we filched our title. Professor Wilentz’s book is a recounting of the debates surrounding the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the political atmosphere from the founding until the Civil War.

When we read it last year

Continue Reading William & Mary Spring Course: “No Property in Man” – Slavery And Property Rights

Check out the latest (and final) episode of the Institute for Justice’s “Bound by Oath” podcast. IJ’s John K. Ross was kind enough to ask us to be a guest on the show titled “Excessive Fines,” and our friend and colleague Bob McNamara and I sat down in Nashville to record our sound bytes. 

The series (not simply a podcast, but more like an audio documentary) is about the Fourteenth Amendment, and covers (inter alia) how and why the rights in the Bill of Rights have, over time, been applied by the Supreme Court to state and local governments under the Due Process “selective incorporation” doctrine.

So why was a takings guy a guest on a show about the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment?  Because last year in Timbs v. Indiana, the Supreme Court held, in a civil forfeiture case, that the Excessive

Continue Reading IJ’s “Bound by Oath” Podcast, Ep. 9: Excessive Fines, 14th Amendment Incorporation (And The Just Compensation Clause)

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Each of the three big presentation rooms was full at our recent ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Nashville. Nearly 300 lawyers, judges, appraisers, professors, students, relocation experts, and others eminent domain professionals coming together for 3 days of programming and fellowship. I have uploaded all of the photos that I took during the conference here

To celebrate another successful and enjoyable conference, we also signed the above commemorative poster from the famous Hatch Show Print shop which was just down the street.  

Can you locate your signature? (high-res pdf here) If you missed out, you’ll have a chance to join us in January 2021 in Scottsdale

Nashville 2020 ALI-CLE Commemorative Poster (signed) 

Continue Reading Thank You To All Who Joined Us In Nashville For The 37th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain Conference!

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L to R: Benming Zhang, Andrew Parslow, Kelsey Abell,
Kacie Couch, Clint Schumacher

At the recent ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Nashville, our colleague Clint Schumacher set up his portable studio and recorded future episodes of his Eminent Domain Podcast. (Barista’s note: Clint was also one of the three featured presenters for Friday’s Ethics panel, and the feedback we’ve been receiving on that program is uniformly excellent.)

Eight of my William and Mary Law School students took several days out of their busy Spring semester schedule to travel to Nashville and participate in-person in the Conference, applying the theories and concepts we learned in the fall semester’s class (Eminent Domain and Property Rights) to the real world of lawyering. (More on their Conference participation in a future post.)

Between sessions, they had a chance to sit down individually and in groups

Continue Reading Eminent Domain Podcast Interviews William & Mary Law Students

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Please mark your calendars and join us next Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 12:30pm ET for the free (for members of the ABA’s Real Property, Trust and Estate Section) webinar, the monthly “Professors’ Corner.”

This one will be on the aftermath of Knick v. Township of Scott, 139 S. Ct. 2162 (2019), in which the Supreme Court formally overruled the “state procedures” ripeness requirement in federal regulatory takings cases. 

We shall be speaking about the case and what’s next along with Professors Stewart Sterk and Michael Pollack (moderated by Professor Shelby D. Green). Here’s the summary of the webinar from the ABA website:

Last term, in Knick v. Township of Scott, the Supreme Court overruled the long-standing requirement that state takings claims first be litigated in state courts. The Court held that a property owner has an actionable takings claim when the government takes property without paying for

Continue Reading Tuesday Feb 11, 2020: Professors’ Corner – The Supreme Shift in Takings Litigation – Knick v. Township of Scott

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Having just wrapped the 2020 ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Nashville (very successfully, but more on that later), we could not depart the area without paying a visit to the site of the late-and-not-so-great Williamson County case, in a nearby suburb (we’ll also have more on that later, once we’re back in the office). 

Driving into the infamous — at least in takings circles — Temple Hills subdivision, we came across this STOP sign at a key intersection, with some curious graffiti. Continue Reading Saw This Sign In Williamson County, Tennessee

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We’re in Nashville for the next three days, where we have record attendance (see above for the name-tag matrix), with nearly 300 attendees spread out over three rooms. 

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The Big Room, before. 

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The Big Room, during. Like we said, record attendance. 

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Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we have very good social events. Like the lunch, below.

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Clint Schumacher brought his Eminent Domain Podcast studio to Nashville to record future episodes.Continue Reading Greetings From The 37th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference, Nashville

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Picture 1: how normal people see pie.

Picture 2: how you see pie if you’re coming to the
ALI-CLE Eminent Domain Conference. 

If you get the above, you probably are already set to join us next week for the 37th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Nashville. (If not, shame on you!).

And having just reviewed the latest registration list, I can report that we have an all-time record attendance.  But there’s still room for those of you still not committed. Register here. Don’t miss out. There will be pie. Continue Reading Record Attendance (But There’s Still Time For You Last-Minute Filers) At Nashville ALI-CLE Eminent Domain Conference