If you know, you know.
Sad birthday wishes to what just might be our most un-favorite decision ever, Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978), which turns 46 today. This in addition to the unhappy Kelo-versary earlier this week. A takings and regulatory takings one-two punch!
Time
Check out this story from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy:
Most pundits missed it, but Alberta’s revised Bill of Rights just strengthened property rights in a big way. Senior research fellow Joseph Quesnel breaks down how new amendments could protect landowners from regulatory takings—government actions that restrict property use without compensation. He examines
It hardly seems like two decades have passed. After all, it was a mere 10 years ago we were lamenting “Kelo At 10: Still Stinks, And A Decade Has Not Lessened The Odor.”
But yes, it was twenty years ago today … the U.S. Supreme Court, by the thinnest of margins, held in
It seems very appropriate that we’re posting the Texas Court of Appeals’ decision in Burgess v. City of Wentworth Village, No. 02-24-00252 (June 19, 2025) today, the twentieth anniversary of Kelo v. New London.
Because on the Kelo-versary, we start as the Burgess opinion did: an epigram wherein the court quoted a
Please add this one to your podcast listening queue: the latest episode of Bound by Oath, produced by John Ross at the Institute for Justice. BBO isn’t a typical podcast, but more of an audio documentary as we have noted before. If you aren’t a subscriber, you really should be.
This episode focuses on
Today is a good day to remember that legal emancipation had its roots in the “contraband” property theory. Here’s a post from a few years ago where we visited what we called “The Birthplace of a More Perfect Union” (Fort Monroe, Virginia).
The contraband property theory was itself very imperfect, and a compromise
In 2021, the Iowa Supreme Court held that a police search of garbage left at curbside for pickup was unconstitutional under the Iowa Constitution’s search and seizure clause. A local ordinance made scavenging through someone’s garbage illegal, which to the court meant that the garbage owner possessed a government-recognized property right in the trash, and
The bottom-line holding in the U.S. Court of Appeals’ recent opinion in Appalachian Voices v. Fed. Energy Reg. Comm’n, No. 24-1094 (June 6, 2025), that FERC was ok when it allowed a pipeline company an extension of time to complete the project isn’t all that surprising. And indeed, it isn’t all that interesting except
A short one from the Virginia Court of Appeals. Very Virginia-specific, but there are lessons here for those of you outside the Old Dominion.
In City of Virginia Beach v. Mathias, No. 2073-23-1 (June 10, 2025), the court held that when a statute requires the condemnor to do something prior to taking property, the
810 years ago today* on a grassy plain down by the river, the barons convinced bad King John to affix his seal to Magna Carta. Or the Magna Carta. Or Magna Charta. However you want to grammarize it. (And no, he didn’t “sign” it, they didn’t do things like that back then.)
And
