Your 2024 Dirt Lawyer Holiday Gift Guide (Including Last-Minute Gifts)

Too busy writing those briefs and petitioning for those writs, so haven’t found the time to hit your local store or the interwebs and fulfill your seasonal duties? Or maybe you just have gifter’s block about an appropriate present for the dirt lawyer in your life this holiday season?

You could go the last-minute route: Charlie Brown got a bag of rocks for Halloween, so you might also consider the same for this holiday season. Or there is that old reliable, origami boulders. Or you could show your giftee that you are tuned-in by giving them some origami boulders handcrafted with love from old print-outs of important Supreme Court takings cases. Also good for the procrastinators, since you don’t need an open store to show your recipient how much you care.

Recycle a few pages and rescue them from the blue bin, and you are in business!

No Martha Stewart skills necessary. Crumple and go!

But come on, man! You are better than that and want to be known as a a good gifter, and not a grifter.

So you can do better. In that spirit and to help you avoid being deemed a Grich (or worse), here are our 2024 suggestions for stocking stuffers that will make property mavens celebrate the season. 

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We recommend starting off with Jim Burling’s tour-de-force book, “Nowhere to Live: the Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis” (2024). Who could resist a book that promises to take “readers through the history of how we got [to the housing crisis]. With stories going back to the Civil War, the early twentieth century, and the ill-fated “urban renewal” movement of the 1950s, Nowhere to Live reveals how the government layered mistake upon mistake to create the current crisis. It also provides a way out: not by government fiat, but through the restoration of private property rights.  overs: which we noted here.” Not us, brothers and sisters!

Get your copy here.  Heck, we recommend getting several copies and handing ’em out to all your giftees.

If you want to keep that theme, and are looking for other books to add to your gift (how generous!), consider these.

Professor Sara Bronin’s book, “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World“(2024), is more like what we’d call a “love letter” to zoning, if only we would do it right.

The land user on your holiday gift list would surely love a book thusly described:

In Key to the City, legal scholar and architect Sara C. Bronin examines how zoning became such a prevailing force and reveals its impact—and its potential for good. Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm. But, as Bronin argues, once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create the communities we desire, and deserve. Drawing on her own experience leading the overhaul of Hartford’s zoning code and exploring the efforts of activists and city planners across the country, Bronin shows how new codes are reshaping our cities—from Baltimore to Chicago, Las Vegas to Minneapolis, and beyond. In Boston, a law fought for by a passionate group of organizers, farmers, and beekeepers is transforming the city into a haven for urban farming. In Tucson, zoning codes are mitigating the impacts of climate change and drought-proofing neighborhoods in peril. In Delray Beach, Florida, a new code aims to capture and maintain the town’s colorful spirit through its architecture.

If you prefer a more academic (but nonetheless highly readable) examination and analysis of where zoning has gone wrong, check out lawprof Robert Ellickson’s “America’s Frozen Neighborhoods: The Abuse of Zoning” (2022):

In this book, Robert Ellickson asserts that local zoning policies are the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. Many localities have created barriers to the development of less costly forms of housing. Numerous economists have found that current zoning practices inflict major damage on the national economy. Using Silicon Valley, the Greater New Haven, Connecticut, area, and the northwestern portion of Greater Austin, Texas, as case studies, Ellickson shows in unprecedented detail how the zoning system works and recommends steps for its reform.

Zoning regulations, Ellickson demonstrates, are hard to dislodge once localities have enacted them. He develops metrics to measure the existence and costs of exclusionary zoning, and suggests reforms that states and the federal government could undertake to counter the detrimental effects of local policies. These include the cartelization of housing markets and the aggravation of racial and class segregation. 

And if you want a funner approach, check out this graphic study, by Bryan Caplan and Ady Branzei, “Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation” (2024): “Combining visually stunning graphics and careful interdisciplinary research, Build, Baby, Build, takes readers on a journey through what is wrong with housing regulations—and what we can do about it.”

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Next consider this, a Hess Triangle t-shirt, available from Brooklyn Streetworks. No no true dirt lawyer could resist this classy depiction of the smallest piece of private real estate in New York. Own your own piece of the Big Apple.

True mavens know this one, and donning this shibboleth is a sign to others in the know that you know your stuff; a “secret handshake” of sorts to kindred spirits.

“Never been dedicated to public use?” Announce to the world your outlook on life, and the way you do business.

You show ’em who’s boss!

For a mere eleven simoleons (plus shipping), you can give a present that every property lawyer will “get,” pick up sticks.

(I understood that reference.)

In case you can’t quite figure it out: “This simple yet classic game hones hand-eye coordination and helps develop a child’s [and your lawyer’s] fine motor skills. The game consists of 41 thin wooden sticks in assorted colors, each measuring 9.5-inches long.“

Gather your right to exclude, your right to make economically productive use, your right to gift or sell (inter vivos or causa mortis), your right to interest-following-principal, and pick ’em up and tie ’em in a bundle.

What’s in the box? Not Grotius. A bundle of sticks!

But if $11 is a bit too spendy for your tastes, you can go even more downmarket, yet keep the same theme, with these “batons” from your local Trader Joe’s).

You might even decide to ditch the metaphor entirely, and give ’em a real honest-to-goodness bundle of sticks.

Yet another classic, sure to put a smile on your dirt lawyer’s face. Show ’em how much you appreciate their expertise and skill with this “insiders” gift. No one else will get it, but they will.

Best of all is that these are out there for the taking (no just compensation required), just waiting for you to pick them up. Also handy for starting up your Yule Log.

Go on, you know you want to.

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A film buff on your list? Already gave ’em The Castle, Little Pink House, and Battle For Brooklyn?

Well fear not, may we suggest “Eminent Domain” (1990).

But hey, the title wouldn’t lie, would it?

Available here. VHS only. Old School.

Want to go literal (or maybe really, really meta)? How about an actual bag of dirt?

That’s right, for a mere $15 USD, you can get a bag of Readi-SOIL RSAPVB-8 All Purpose Vegetable Blend Total Organic Soil Remedy. Straight from Tractor Supply Company.

As described by the seller, “a naturally perfect blend of our own, site-managed worm castings combined with distinctly homorganic deep woods peat moss, resulting in the perfect planting soil.”

What dirt lawyer could not love actual dirt?

Beats a bag of rocks, Charlie Brown!

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But let’s say you don’t live in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, and thus do not have ready access to coal-in-the-wild? Well, you are in luck: the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton has a store, and you can have it shipped. If it is too late for that, there’s always a rock and some glossy black paint from your local hardware store.