Greenwire's Lawrence Hurley has posted his preview of next week's Supreme Court arguments in Arkansas Game & Fish Comm'n v. United States, No. 11-597 (cert. granted Apr. 2, 2012).
In Ark. girds for showdown with Army Corps over forest flooding, Hurley writes:The Supreme Court's job is to decide whether temporary flooding of the type that occurred at the Black River site can constitute a "taking," which is generally viewed as a permanent loss of property.Or as Ilya Shapiro, a legal scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, rephrased the question: "When a tree falls in a forest due to temporary flooding, does it make a sound for which you can recover under the takings clause?"
The story details some of the personalities on the property owner side, and is worth reading.
