July 2015

Hawaii Business magazine has a new report about Honolulu rail. The headline asks, “How Much Will It Cost Us In The End?” 

There are questions of how much over original projections the rail project currently is. Or whether it is really over budget at all. Anywhere from zero (according to HART), to $1

We’re in Chicago this week participating in the ABA Annual Meeting. While we really are looking forward to a slate of thrilling committee meetings, what we’re really anticipating is the CLE programming. Here are what we think are the highlights:

  • Looming Land Use Constitutional Issues –  Friday, July 31, 2:45 – 4:15 pm, Westin Chicago

If you need CLE credits, you are in luck. There’s a plethora of upcoming programs that may be of interest to readers. 

First, the ones we’re involved with:

  • The Takings Issue – August 10, 2015, 1 – 2pm ET (webinar) – from the International Municipal Lawyers Association. We’re joining Professors Dan Mandelker and John Echeverria,

We’ve covered this topic before (see here, here, and here), but we haven’t heard much about it lately. But thanks to this new article by colleague Dwight H. Merriam, we can get back up to speed.

In “Eminent Domain for Underwater Mortgages: Already on the Way to the Bottom of

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The Hornes outside the Supreme Court

“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Chief Justice Earl Warren,
Brown v. Board of Education

“The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
dissenting in Lochner v. New York

“…prejudice against discrete and insular minorities…”
Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, in footnote 4

Readers know that some jurisdictions have statutes which permit private condemnations — actions in which the owner of a landlocked parcel can exercise eminent domain to take the property of a neighbor for access. They are somewhat like common law easements by necessity, and we’ve seen then in Pennsylvania (private takings still must serve a

This opinion isn’t big news, but come on, it’s about two of our favorite topics (eminent domain and appellate jurisdiction), it’s short, and it’s from the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands. How often do we get those? Plus, we’re just interested in how courts from fellow island jurisdictions rule.

Bottom line: in a