If there's one downside to the law school experience from the teacher's side of the lectern, it's grading. Especially at a law school like William and Mary that has a pretty strict mandatory curve.
In an upper-division course like "Eminent Domain and Property Rights Law," where we're dealing with some very high-level stuff and the quality of the students is uniformly excellent, that makes for some hard choices at this time of year. But we've wrapped up grading, and have submitted the official scores.
Although I cannot share with you all the papers themselves, I don't think my students would mind if I give you a sampling of the topics and titles, just so you can see how the next generation of lawyers is thinking about this area of law:
- One Man's Castle is Another Man's Parking Lot: A Homeowner's Theory of Eminent Domain
- Native Title: Concept and Compensation
- May the Forest Be With You: John Does in Trees Fight Pipelines Using the Right to Include
- Apportioning "A Chicken Which Is Really Not Big Enough to Go Around": Why Courts Should Abandon the Undivided Fee Rule for the Aggregate of Interests Approach
- Madisonian Musings on Judicial Takings
- Why Knick v. Township of Scott Returned Takings Jurisprudence to the Values Behind the Fourteenth Amendment
- In the Aftermath of Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and Livingston v. Virginia Department of Transportation: Virginia Localities Need to Plan for Great Liability Risks From Flooding
- The Veterans of Foreign Wars Case and the Undivided Fee Rule: Just Compensation for More Than One Owner
- Up-Zoning: A New American Dream and Shifting Property Paradigm
- I Believe I Can (Maybe) Fly: A Survey of Proper Law Interaction With Drones
- EPA's Takings Liability for Climate Change Inaction
- Are Pipelines Public Uses?
- In States We Trust: The Limits, and Lack Thereof, on the States' Power to Modify the Public Trust Doctrine
- The Public Use Requirement: Changes Over Time
I don't know about you, but I feel pretty good about this. I will be encouraging several of them to consider beefing up their papers and submitting them for publication somewhere.
Finally, I can't resist cutting and pasting from one of the paper's footnotes: "For more on 'exclusionary vibes' and the power of eminent domain, see The Castle (Debra Choate 1997)."
Obi-Wan has taught you well.
