Details soon. In the meantime, get your earlier registration discount.
ALI-CLE Palm Springs (72º, Sunny) Here We Come
If you didn’t register to attend the 36th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference later this week in Palm Springs, California, well then, shame on you!
According to the National Weather Service, while you and the rest of the country is freezing, we’ll be enjoying the balmy desert climes, and discussing
Hot (Eminent Domain) Topics, Cool Jazz
Don’t Miss the 2019 Eminent Domain Litigation Conference from American Law Institute CLE on Vimeo.
Check out this sound blurb, produced by the good media folks at ALI-CLE, about the upcoming Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference. (And no, we didn’t record this in a jazz club; although I wish we had.)
There’s
2018 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Report: Emerging Issues
Last week, the 15th Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference saw the gathering of legal scholars, judges, lawyers, and law students at the William and Mary Law School to award the B-K Property Rights Prize to Cardozo lawprof Stewart Sterk, followed by a day-long conference focusing on Professor Sterk’s work and the latest developments in property
Join Us For The 36th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference In Palm Springs (Jan 24-26, 2019)
Our colleague and co-planning chair Joe Waldo was in town yesterday, so we walked through historic Williamsburg, Virginia (cradle of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), to invite you to join us for the 36th Annual ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (January 24-26, 2019, in Palm Springs, California).
Links And Materials From Today’s Transportation Research Board Session
Here are the cases and other items I either spoke about or mentioned at today’s Transportation Research Board‘s 57th Annual Workshop on Transportation Law in Cambridge, Massachusetts:
- The Colorado public use cases: public use vs. public purpose: Lafayette and Carousel Farms
- On the Supreme Court docket: Violet Dock Port (SCOTUS, Louisiana)
- The Louisiana Supreme
SCOTUS Reply: Determining Compensation For Taking A Private Right Is A Judicial Function
Here’s the Reply Brief in a case we’ve been following, Brott v. United States, No. 17-712, in which the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to consider whether property owners who sue the federal government for a taking are entitled to both an Article III forum, and to have the issues determined by a jury.
ALI-CLE Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Conference – In-Person Registration SOLD OUT (But You Can Still Join By Live Webcast)
Our upcoming American Law Institute-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Charleston, South Carolina has SOLD OUT our in-person registrations.
We will have a record attendance (with over 100 first-time attendees) and the conference hotel has informed us that we can fit no more people in the meeting rooms. We cannot remember this
New York City Uncompensated Takings Pilgrimage, High Line Edition
At first, you might not pay much attention to it. After all, it doesn’t really stick out — elevated rail lines aren’t that unusual in a big city. Street-level trains and pedestrians don’t mix well, and in the early 20th Century, New York State adopted a law which moved some of the lines above
New Amici Brief: In Our System, Unlike Those In Which Monarchs Rule Over Their Subjects, The Federal Government Can Be Sued In Its Own Courts
Here’s the amici brief we filed earlier today in a case we’ve been following closely since its inception (and in which we filed an amicus brief when it was in the Sixth Circuit).
This is Brott v. United States, No. 17-712 (cert. petition filed Nov. 6, 2017), the case which asks whether Congress can require property owners asserting inverse condemnation or regulatory takings cases seeking just compensation against the federal government to sue in the Article I Court of Federal Claims. The Question Presented which the petition presents is straightforward:
Can the federal government take private property and deny the owner the ability to vindicate his constitutional right to be justly compensated in an Article III Court with trial by jury?
Rather than go into detail about our brief’s argument, we’ll just post the Summary of Argument:
The government does not enjoy its usual sovereign immunity when it takes property, either affirmatively or inversely, and this Court has repeatedly confirmed that the Just Compensation Clause is “self-executing.” First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 315 (1987) (“We have recognized that a landowner is entitled to bring an action in inverse condemnation as a result of ‘the self-executing character of the constitutional provision with respect to compensation.”).
But what does this mean, exactly? Even as the Sixth Circuit recognized that property owners have a right to compensation that springs from the Constitution itself and the right to sue does not depend upon a waiver of sovereign immunity, it held that Congress is not compelled to provide an Article III forum to vindicate that right. Or indeed, any forum at all. Thus, even if the forum Congress created―the Article I non-jury Court of Federal Claims (CFC)―is not constitutionally adequate, well, that’s good enough. In the words of the Sixth Circuit, “[t]he Fifth Amendment details a broad right to compensation, but does not provide a means to enforce that right. Courts must look to other sources (such as the Tucker Act and the Little Tucker Act) to determine how the right to compensation is to be enforced.” Brott v. United States, 858 F.3d 425, 432-33 (6th Cir. 2017). That is sovereign immunity by another name.
However, we think this Court said it best in United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882), the takings lawsuit over what today is Arlington National Cemetery, when it held that courts (referring to Article III courts, and not what is, in essence, a Congressional forum), must be available for those whose property has been taken:
The [government’s argument it cannot be sued] is also inconsistent with the principle involved in the last two clauses of article 5 of the amendments to the constitution of the United States, whose language is: ‘That no person * * * shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.’ . . . Undoubtedly those provisions of the constitution are of that character which it is intended the courts shall enforce, when cases involving their operation and effect are brought before them.
Id. at 218-19.
The story of how the private estate of General Robert E. Lee’s family became Arlington National Cemetery is at the center of this case: the Court held that Lee’s heir was entitled—after a jury trial in an Article III court—to ownership of the property. The Court affirmed that in our system, unlike those in which monarchs rule over their subjects, the federal government could be sued in its own courts, and that the government had violated Lee’s due process rights and had taken Arlington without compensation. Lee may have been rendered 135 years ago, but the principles which the Court enunciated on sovereign immunity, the independent federal judiciary, and the Fifth Amendment, are still highly relevant today.
Others have filed amicus briefs in support, and we’ll post those shortly. Or, you can now go to the Court’s docket entry for the case and download them directly yourself.
Stay tuned, as always.