property rights
On This Date in History: Property Rights Won Big in the Supreme Court
June 29, 1992 was a great day for property rights advocates. But what came later wasn’t so good.
On this date in 1992, the property rights movement achieved its greatest victory in the form of the Supreme Court’s Lucas ruling. The campaign to protect property rights seemed to have huge momentum. But things didn’t work out that way. For property rights advocates, Lucas turned out to be a false dawn. Mr. Lucas owned …
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CONTINUE READINGAnimal, vegetable or mineral?
A lesson in judicial humility and a thought experiment about property rights
This topic may be a bit far afield for this blog, but dinosaurs are always worth considering . . . The Montana Supreme Court has resolved an intriguing dispute about ownership of fossilized dinosaur remains that turned on the question of whether those remains were or were not “minerals.” In the process, the Montana court …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Saving Lives Unconstitutional? A Response to John Yoo
Takings law is complicated, but the answer to this question is clear. The answer is no.
Like others on the extreme right, the Hoover Institution is campaigning against “stay at home” orders because they cost too much money. Regrettably, the most recent argument to this effect on their website is by my colleague John Yoo. He argues that the Constitution requires states to compensate business owners for their losses. That’s simply …
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CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Takes a Knick Out of Regulatory Takings Law
Justices Curb Ripeness Rule; Open Federal Courts to Takings Litigation
In the final, major environmental law decision of its current Term, the U.S. Supreme Court handed property rights advocates a major victory while repudiating an important regulatory takings precedent the Court had itself fashioned and announced 34 years ago. The case is Knick v. Township of Scott. By a narrow 5-4 vote that split …
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CONTINUE READINGContentious California Beach Access Case Heads to U.S. Supreme Court
Longstanding Martins Beach Controversy May Well Capture Justices’ Attention
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018-19 Term is already shaping up as a big one for environmental law in general and the longstanding tension between private property rights and environmental regulation in particular. The Court has already agreed to hear and decide two cases next Term raising the latter set of issues: one involves the question …
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CONTINUE READINGFencelines
The Supreme Court rules on how to define a parcel of property under the Constitution
The Supreme Court ruled today on Murr v. Wisconsin, a takings case that could have potentially had a major effect on land use regulation. The Supreme Court has ruled that a “taking” of private property exists if the state prohibits all economically beneficial use of property. Naturally, lawyers have gleefully litigated the question of how …
CONTINUE READINGIt’s Environmental Law Week at the California Supreme Court
Justices to Hear Oral Arguments in Three Major Environmental Cases This Week
The California Supreme Court currently has approximately twenty pending environmental cases on its docket. This week, the Court’s justices will hear oral arguments in three of the most important of those cases. Taken together, these looming decisions raise important issues concerning the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), federal preemption, climate change mitigation and adaptation, private …
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CONTINUE READINGEvangelicals Versus Property Rights
Guess who invented the idea that property rights evolve with changing social values?
Today, evangelical Christians tend to be aligned with conservatives in defense of private property. But that was not always true. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, evangelicals launched a major attack on property rights. As historian John Compton documents in a recent book, they also adopted the idea of the “living Constitution” to justify …
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CONTINUE READINGDrought and the Supreme Court
Does the Court’s Decision in the Raisin Case Imperil Water Management?
When I first read Rick’s writeup of the Supreme Court’s decision in USDA v. Horne, concerning the federal government’s Depression-era system of “marketing orders” that required farmers to set aside a percentage of their raisin crop in a government-controlled account, I was worried about water. And that’s not just because I always worry about water. Horne turned on …
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CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Supreme Court Rules Federal Agricultural Program a Taking
Justices Uphold California Raisin Growers’ Fifth Amendment Challenge
The United States Supreme Court today ended a David-and-Goliath-style, 10-year legal battle between a pair of California raisin growers and the federal government, declaring that the government triggered a compensable taking of the growers’ private property when a federally-controled agricultural board ordered seizure of a portion of their crop. The Court’s decision can be accessed …
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