Pictured: PLF’s Steve Davis, getting us started. We’re underway today with the academic symposium “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead” at the George Mason Law School. Cosponsored by the law school’s Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy, Mercatus Center, and our outfit Pacific Legal Foundation, the symposium is designed to focus the discussion of housing, zoning, and property rights (hot topics in the headlines), and ask the question: has Euclidean zoning outlived its usefulness? And if so, what, if anything, should replace it?
Continue Reading Today: “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead”
There Will Be Takings: New Complaint Challenging California’s “Sensitive Receptor” Setback Statute
Check this out, a new complaint, filed this week in a federal court in California.
[We won’t be offering all that much comment on this because it is one of ours.]
This a takings challenge to a California statute which establishes a purported 3,200-foot safety zone around “sensitive receptors” that “prohibits the drilling of new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet
of “sensitive receptors,” which includes most places where the public works, lives, and plays.” Complaint at 1.
Continue Reading There Will Be Takings: New Complaint Challenging California’s “Sensitive Receptor” Setback Statute
We’re Underway At The 43d American Law Institute Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Conference, Savannah
The view from the podium
That’s right. More than 300 of the nation’s best eminent domain lawyers, judges, appraisers, right-of-way agents, scholars, and other industry professionals are in Savannah for the next two and a half days for what is now known as the American Law Institute (“ALI” alone, no longer with the “-CLE” addition)
Yale J. Reg. Symposium On Kelo’s Twentieth
No better way to start 2026 than to check out the Yale Journal of Regulation‘s (the self-labeled “Nation’s Top-Ranked Administrative and Corporate Law Journal”), for its symposium on the twentieth anniversary of the Kelo case.
Featuring authors who readers of this blog will recognize (all the big names), the symposium features articles you
2026 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize To Professor James Penner
William and Mary Law School’s Property Rights Project has announced that Professor James E. Penner (Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law at the National University of Singapore) will be awarded the 2026 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize.
This is in keeping with the international theme in the 2026 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, which will
Fla SCT Declines Review: En Banc Court Of Appeal Decision That Downzoning Was A Lucas Taking (And Sale Of Property For Third-Party TDRs Is Not A “Use”), Stands
Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following (because it is a product of our shop: we represent the property owners/plaintiffs).
In this Order, the Florida Supreme Court declined to exercise jurisdiction to review the Third District Court of Appeals en banc opinion in Shands v. City of Marathon. So that decision
You Don’t Look A Day Over 98, Euclid
Tomorrow, November 22, 2025 is the 99th anniversary of the day in 1926 when the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark opinion in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (Nov. 22, 1926).
You know this one (and can you call yourself a dirt lawyer if you don’t?).
CA11: “[T]here is no COVID exception to the Takings Clause”
Check this out: a significant and important decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in an issue we’ve been following.
In Alford v. Walton County, No. 2021-13999 (Nov. 17, 2025), the unanimous panel concluded that the county’s Co-19 restrictions, which closed all beaches (public and private) in the county
Savannah Bound: Don’t Miss The 43rd ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (Jan. 22-24, 2026)
As we wrap up another year, it’s time to look ahead to the one event that always gets our eminent domain blood pumping: the annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference. Details, including faculty list, a complete agenda, and registration information is posted here.
Now in its 43rd year, this flagship gathering
Free to Choose Podcast: “Eminent Domain”
Check this out: a podcast from Free to Choose Media, entitled “Eminent Domain,” published a couple of months ago.
But the description reveals a time capsule:
Recorded in 2003, Dennis McCuistion, former Clinical Professor of Corporate Governance and Executive Director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas