We’re not all that down with the “occupy movement.” It seems too unfocused, too anti-competition, too anti-success for us to get on board with the idea that equality of result is what the American dream and our system are based on.
But things like this profile of MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president of commercial and
“Yosemite,” according to California Place Names, Erwin Gudde’s seminal work on the origins of (surprise) California place names, means “they are killers.” It was “[e]vidently a name given to the Indians of the valley by those outside it.”
I raise this historical tidbit because I must admit to feeling a little like “those outside
Law professor Richard Epstein was a featured speaker (and past Brigham-Kanner prize winner) at the recent B-K Property Rights Conference in Beijing. He’s summarized his thoughts and insights in “Going Red on Property Rights,” posted at the Hoover Institute’s site. He writes:
Earlier this month, I attended a Chinese-American Conference in Beijing on property rights co-sponsored by the William and Mary Law School and the Tsinghua University Law School. One purpose of the conference was to award in absentia the Brigham-Kanner Prize to retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for her contributions to understanding the law of property. The intensive two-day discussions on property rights were open, animated, and cordial. They also revealed deep ironies in both the Chinese and American approaches to property rights.
The entire piece is well worth reading. All of our posts on the B-K Conference are collected here. I’m writing my wrap-up of the Conference and will post it shortly.
In the meantime, I offer this little story.
A few of us are walking the 15 minutes from the hotel to the moot courtroom at the Tsinghua Law School, through the university campus. We cross the lightly traveled road, and most of us step up onto the opposite sidewalk. Professor Epstein, engrossed in conversation with another lawprof, doesn’t notice they are walking down the middle of the road, blocking traffic.
A few seconds later, a car comes up behind them.
In Beijing, pedestrians decidedly do not have the right of way.
“Get out of the road!” we call out.
Epstein slowly turns around, looks at the car, looks at us, and says with a smile, “sidewalks are for mere mortals.”
(But he does get out of the road.)
Continue Reading Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference – “Mere Mortal” Professor Richard Epstein on “Going Red on Property Rights”
Earlier, we posted Justice Scalia’s assertion at a recent conference that Kelo ranked among the top all-time blown calls by the Supreme Court. While the Kelo majority opinion is decidedly foul, does it really sink to the level of Dred Scott, the opinion in which the Court concluded that Africans could never be U.S.
The Urban Lawyer, the law review produced by the ABA Section of State & Local Goverment Law has published my article Recent Developments in Condemnation Law: Public Use, Private Property, 43 Urban Lawyer 877 (2011).
The article “summarizes recent cases in which the issue was the power of condemnors to take property, including
Here’s what we are reading this Thursday:
According to the ABA Journal, Justice Antonin Scalia said this:
Justice Antonin Scalia predicted Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London will be overturned.
Speaking to students at the Chicago-Kent School of Law, Scalia criticized the decision allowing the city of New London to use eminent domain to
Save the date: on Thursday, December 1, 2011 (1:00pm-2:30pm EST, 10:00am-11:30am PST) we’ll be presenting the on-line seminar “Eminent Domain: Redevelopment Challenges for Local Governnment – Navigating Federal Funding Requirements, Challenges for Public Utilities in Right-of-Way Projects, and Objections to Taking for Public Use.“
Joining me are colleagues Anthony Della Pelle (McKirdy
Next week, power adapters and internet connectivity permitting, we’ll be blogging from the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference at the Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.
Admin note: We’ve added “Brigham-Kanner Conference” as a separate category to catalog the posts related to the Conference. In order to read all of the
Some day, the Court will grant cert in another eminent domain case.
But today is not that day.
The Court declined to review C & J Coupe Family Ltd. P’ship v. County of Hawaii, No. 11-75, the petition that asked, after Kelo, when is eminent domain pretextual? We represent the petitioner, and
