Due process

We sure wish we could have attended the Cato Institute’s recent Constitution Day program in Washington, D.C., but here’s the next best thing, a video of the presentations on Property Rights, with a review of the recent Sackett and PPL Montana decisions by the Supreme Court, and an update about the state of property rights.

In Moore v. City of Middletown, No 2012-1363 (Aug. 30, 2012), the Ohio Supreme Court held that a property owner did not have standing to bring a regulatory takings claim when a “foreign municipality” (the neighboring city) rezoned an adjacent parcel, because the municipality did not have jurisdiction to exercise eminent domain over his…

Here’s a few reports worth reading:

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An interesting new complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Hawaii, asserting claims for substantive due process, violation of the zoning enabling act, and the Kauai County Charter.

A owner of property that has been designated for resort development for 35 years is asserting that the adoption by the County’s voters of a charter amendment…

On Thursday, August 2, 2012, at 3:30 p.m., as part of the ABA Annual Meeting, the ABA and the State & Local Government Law Section is sponsoring a free screening of “ Crime After Crime,” the award-winning documentary from director Yoav Potash chronicling two San Francisco Bay Area land use lawyers who volunteer to provide their services to try and help free a woman who has been imprisoned for 20 years. We saw the film last year, and loved it. It was one of the best we have seen in a while:

“Crime” and “land use lawyers” are phrases not usually heard together; in most cases, the worlds of criminal law and land use never intersect, and lawyers for developers and property owners don’t have much occasion to visit the “Attorney’s Room” at the state pen. But in the documentary film Crime After Crime, two land use lawyers including our State and Local Government Law Section colleague Nadia Costa (Vice-Chair of the Section’s Land Use Committee), plunge into that unfamiliar milieu.

In 1983, Deborah Peagler, a woman brutally abused by her boyfriend, was sentenced to 25 years-to-life for her connection to his murder. Twenty years later, as she languished in prison, a California law allowing incarcerated domestic-violence survivors to reopen their cases was passed. Enter a pair of rookie land-use attorneys convinced that with the incontrovertible evidence that existed, they could free Deborah in a matter of months.

More details on the case here. Read my complete review here. Here are the details of the screening:

Location: DePaul University College of Law, 25 E. Jackson Blvd, Chicago, Room 241.

Cost: Free.

CLE Credits: Following the screening, we will be presenting a CLE on “The Cost of Wrongful Convictions” featuring Director Potash, Nadia Costa (one of the lawyers featured in “Crime After Crime”), Craig Watkins (District Attorney, Dallas), and Emily Miller (Better Government Association, Chicago). The panel will be moderated by our SLG Section colleague Donna Frazier.

Hope you can join us if you are attending the Annual Meeting, or are just in Chicago.
Continue Reading ABA Annual Meeting, Chicago: Free Screening Of “Crime After Crime”

Recently, in Intellectual Laziness on the Supreme Court, a short essay about the Supreme Court’s recent Equal Protection decision about unequal property assessments, Professor Richard Epstein wrote, “[i]t’s time to scrap the irrational ‘rational basis test.'” Decisions like the Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Samson v. City of Bainbridge Island, No. 10-35352…

Update: the latest in the latest Williamson County-related cert petition here.

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If you tried to explain the practical results of Williamson County‘s ripeness requirements to someone not familiar in the last 30 years of regulatory takings jurisprudence, they would probably think you were joking.

As we’ve explained many times, under Williamson…

It’s always a safe bet to predict that the Supreme Court will decline to review a case. Statistics, after all, are on the side of “cert denied” regardless of the substantive merits of a case.

But there are some cases, like Harmon v. Kimmel, No. 11-496 (cert. petition filed Oct. 17, 2011), the case…