2023

As 2023 comes to a close, here are a few of the decisions that we wanted to blog about, but didn’t have the time.

  • Bruce v. Ogden City Corp., No. 22-4114 (10th Cir. Dec. 1, 2023): city demolishing a building that was damaged by fire was not a Lucas taking because the owner

Here are the cases that Michael Berger and I discussed in today’s presentation to the ABA State and Local Government Law Section’s Land Use group. It was good seeing everyone, even virtually:

Screenshot 2023-12-26 at 07-40-26 “to protect all the essential elements of ownership ” Late Nineteenth Century Emergence of the Regulatory Takings Doctrine

A must-read from Professor James Ely, “to protect all the essential elements of ownership:” Late Nineteenth Century Emergence of the Regulatory Takings Doctrine, 13 Brigham-Kanner Prop. Rts. J. ___ (forthcoming 2024).

Professor Ely, who presented this paper at the recent Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, lays out the case that the regulatory takings

DSCF3357
The place hasn’t changed that much since 1980, has it?

As you know, the legendary Gideon Kanner left us in November. The tributes continue to be published. You’ve no doubt seen our remembrance of Professor K, as well as this one from Southern California Appellate News, this memorial from Loyola Law, our

Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following.

In this Order, the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii made permanent its earlier ruling that Honolulu’s ordinance which expanded the minimum rental term to 90 days because it did not account for those owners who were already legally renting their properties

PXL_20230223_024826759

Starting in January, we’ll be helping our friend and former law partner Mark M. Murakami with the venerated and oh-so-important Land Use course (Law 580) at the University of Hawaii’s Law School.

We’re temporarily stepping into some mighty big slippers (this is Hawaii, so we don’t always wear shoes), as this is the course that

We’ve been eagerly waiting for the new season of the Institute for Justice’s podcast series, “Bound by Oath” to drop. Not only because it’s a great series – produced by John Ross, it is more like an audio documentary than a typical podcast – but also because John was kind enough to ask

You might not think that the principle of law the Louisiana Court of Appeal (Fourth Circuit) enunciated in Watson Memorial Spiritual Temple of Christ v. Korban, No. 2023-CA-0293 (Dec. 13, 2023) is really in need of enunciating: if the government takes property, the property owner is entitled to just compensation. Entitled, as in the

You remember that longstanding trope: that matters of land use are “local” issues, and thus in civil rights claims involving a state or local government interfering with the right of property federal courts should avoid adjudication until the government has had every chance to do the right thing (even where it is patently obvious that