What we’re reading today:
- “Setting boundaries for property rights” — an opinion piece in the National Law Journal by our friend Timothy Sandefur about the Florida beachfront takings case, Stop the Beachfront Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (cert. granted. June 15, 2009). Highlight: “There must be some limit on the power of state courts to redefineproperty rights. The Supreme Court long ago limited their power tochange other laws in ways that infringe on constitutional freedoms.Southern judges often used cunning interpretations of state law tosilence civil rights protesters, only to be reversed by the high court.In one case, after a group of activists was convicted of trespass afterholding a sit-in, the justices overruled the conviction on the groundthat the South Carolina Supreme Court had ‘unforeseeably andretroactively expanded [the statute] by judicial construction,’ inviolation of due process.”
- “The Key to Justice Kennedy? Why, It’s Liberty!” — from the Law Blog at the Wall St. Journal, a write up about a new book “Justice Kennedy’s Jurisprudence” by Frank Colucci. The book concludes that the polestar of Justice Kennedy’s judicial philosophy is liberty, “his moral reading of the Constitution.”
- The Court of Federal Claims Banks v. United States, No. 99-4451L (Aug. 11, 2009) issued a lengthy and detailed opinion by Chief Judge Emily Hewitt in a case seeking compensation for erosion along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan caused by the Corps of Engineers construction and maintenance of jetties in the harbor at St. Joseph, Michigan. The opinion contains a good summary of the applicable law.