In a short opinion in Sierra Club v. Castle & Cooke Homes Hawaii, Inc., No. CAAP-11-0000625 (Aug. 24, 2012), the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals held that the Hawaii Senate’s failure to confirm a sitting Land Use Commissioner for a second term did not disqualify him under Haw. Rev. Stat. § 26-34(a):
Kanuha
This just in: as we predicted after oral arguments (see HAWSCT Oral Argument Recap – Who Defines The “Project” For Archaeological Review? and The Real “Descendants” Plays Out In The Hawaii Supreme Court – Honolulu’s $4+ Billion Rail Project In Grave Danger), in a unanimous opinion, Hawaii Supreme Court has slapped down the
According to the Washington Post, a Texas county judge has concluded that TransCanada is a common carrier, and therefore may exercise eminent domain to take property for its Keystone XL pipeline.
In an unusual twist (but one which we fully expect to see more of as smartphones become ubiquitous), the court apparently informed the
According to a recent poll, 2/3 of Americans could not name a single Supreme Court justice. This news was predictably met with calls for remedial civics lessons … The horror!
But we say: so what if your average citizen can’t identify Justice Kagan, or Justice Kennedy, or the Chief Justice.
Isn’t that why you
A short one, but one worth noting. In Howard v. United States, No 09-575L (CFC Aug. 1, 2012), the U.S. Court of Federal Claims once again rejected the government’s too-clever-by-half argument in a railbanking case.
Thanks to colleague Thor Hearne for the heads-up on this decision.
Florida land use and environmental law attorney Jake Cremer has posted the Brief in Opposition in Koontz v. St. Johs River Water Management Dist., No. 11-1447 (cert. petition filed May 30, 2012), the case asking whether the Nollan/Dolan nexus and proportionality tests apply to a land-use exaction that takes the form
If actor John Cusack is in favor of using eminent domain to condemn underwater mortgages, who are we to be naysayers? In light of his support, we’ll just have to revisit our earlier skepticism.
After all, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, you know.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is well known to people in Hawaii, or at least should be. After all, he penned the majority opinion in Rice v. Cayetano, 529 U.S. 495 (2009), the decision invalidating Native Hawaiian-only voting for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency whose mission is to “protect
When a Hawaii Supreme Court opinion starts off like this one, waxing poetic about “Na Wai Eha, or ‘the four great waters of Maui,'” you don’t need to read the remaining 88 pages to know what the inevitable result will be: the Water Commission got it wrong, again.
That’s the end result of the
