If you ever get the opportunity to teach in a law school -- either as a full-time legal scholar, or part-time as an expert adjunct practitioner -- take it if you can. You might think you know a lot about a particular subject, but there's nothing like spending time at the lectern in a law classroom in front of sharp and eager lawyers-in-training to sharpen your thoughts, and get you to truly understand a subject.
And folks calling you "professor" can evoke a smile.
But 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 upper-division courses that we handle like Eminent Domain and Property Rights Law and Land Use -- where we're dealing with some very high-level stuff and the quality of the students is uniformly high -- that makes for some hard choices at this time of year. Despite these challenges, we've wrapped up grading for the Fall 2021 Semester, and have submitted the official scores.
Although I cannot share with you the students' final papers in these classes, I don't think they 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 property, property rights, takings, land use, and environmental law (inter alia).
Check out these titles:
- The Many Saints of Land Use Law
- The Past, Present, and Future of Richmond Affordable Housing
- What's on the Menu? - The Future of Outdoor Dining and the Tension Between Land Use and Public Health
- Could Monetary Compensation Fully Indemnify Property Owners for Idiosyncratic Values in Takings Cases?
- The Lingering Effects of the Dawes Act on Tribal Land Use
- The Dawn of Debt and Everything Else: An Examination of the Works of Michael Graeber and the Role of Eminent Domain and Property Rights
- Inflation for Land Use Control
- Agritourism in Wine Country: Analysis of Accessory Uses in Napa Valley
- Judicial Exaction of Euclidean Deference Under Koontz
- A Review of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- What’s on the Inside Counts: Why Historical Preservation Regulations Should be Allowed to Regulate Interior Landmarks and the Issue of Public Access
- Through the Buchanan Lens: Reframing Virginia Land Use Laws
- The Case for Equal Application of RLUIPA’s Equal Terms Provision
- The Government Giveth, and the Government Taketh Away: Retroactive Application of Inter Partes Review Under the Takings Clause
- The Right to Share: Is Virginia Beach’s Regulation of Short Term Rentals a Taking under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment?
- The laws of nature do not recognize property rights, complicating the Commonwealth of Virginia’s adaptation to climate change
- Looking at Viniculture Through the Glass of Historic Preservation Law, or
A Brief Wine Advocate- Is the New York State Canal Corporation the Onceler of Upstate New York?: An Analysis of Town of Pittsford v. Power Authority of New York
- Law and Ownership as Evolving Stories: A Review of Mine!
- Incentive Zoning in New York
- The Tide is High but Norfolk's Holding on: An Analysis of Norfolk's Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and a Review of the Potential Claims in Response
- Flipping the Play: How Localities Can Use the Power of Eminent Domain to Seize Sports Franchises and Finally Stick it to Bob Irsay
- Land Use Control – Is it Important to the Average Joe?
- Re-Evaluating Bennis and Civil Forfeitures Under the Takings Clause
- The Guardian of Every Other Right - A Constitutional History of Property Rights and a Discussion on Tariffs, Redistributionism, and Capitalist Liberty
- Pipelines and Eminent Domain: A Constitutional and Environmental Analysis of Energy Takings
- Paradise Stolen: An Ethical Reexamination of Property Deprivation and the Plight of the Atakapa-Ishak Peoples of Louisiana’s Grand Bayou Indian Village
- A Flood of Pollutants: The Promises and Perils of a Regulatory-Takings Approach to the Right to a Clean Environment
And this is only a sampling.
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.
