Today’s reports that the U.S. Navy has destroyed one (or more) of Iran’s Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines got us thinking back to the time we and our colleagues filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving the conflict between environmental law (in that case the National Environmental Policy Act, the law requiring study and disclosure of possible environmental impacts from certain actions), on one hand, and national defense on the other. …
Continue Reading Kilo-Class Subs? Yes, We Covered That. Dusting Off Our Admirals’ SCOTUS Amicus Brief In Sonar EIS Case: The Real-World Consequences Of Environmental Law

Today’s post is by our friend and Pacific Legal Foundation colleague Steve Davis, reporting on his recent attendance at the recent Texas A & M Journal of Property Law symposium, “Property Law and ‘Aggie Spirit.'”…
Continue Reading Texas A & M Journal of Property Law Symposium Report: “Day Zero: How Cities Run Out of Water”

We generally don’t feature “unpublished” opinions. Most courts don’t treat them as binding anyone but the parties in the case, and some even consider them un-citeable. We think this is wrong, and that everything an appellate court does should be considered precedent — otherwise, what the heck is the court doing? — but we don’t make the rules.
Continue Reading Unpublished Monday: Anarchy Takings, Highest And Best Use, Inverse Statute Of Limitations

Next week, we’ll be at the Denver Law School for the 2026 Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute’s “Western Places | Western Spaces” annual conference. Earlier in our career, we were a fairly regular attendee, but for mesne reasons (unrelated to the conference) our ability to attend kind of fell off. Recognizing that shortcoming, we attended the 2025 Conference last year. This convinced us that indeed, we were missing out. In short, the RMULI has returned as a featured event on our calendar.
Continue Reading Join Us At The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute (Denver) To Talk Sheetz, And Housing

Courtrooms are places for serious business. After all, people’s lives, businesses, property, and past and futures are at stake. It’s right that the court, the lawyers, and the public take what goes on there seriously. But judges and lawyers are also human, so it should surprise no one that moments of levity and humor can creep in.
Continue Reading Lighter Moments In Yesterday’s SCOTUS Takings Arguments

Check out this call for papers from our firm, Pacific Legal Foundation.

The call of the question is intriguing: is there room in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence for a property-base view (as opposed to the prevalent Katz “expectation of privacy” focus now in vogue? After all, the Fourth Amendment mentions things that we classify as property…

Here is the transcript of the oral arguments held earlier today in Pung v. Isabella County. [And before we get further, a disclosure: this case is one of ours as the above courthouse steps photo shows.]…
Continue Reading Transcript And Audio From Today’s SCOTUS Takings And Excessive Fine Arguments (Pung v. Isabella County)

Here’s what’s on our radar screen today: Anthony Flint, How Zoning Won (Bloomberg) (“In 1926, the Supreme Court’s Euclid decision enshrined zoning in US cities. On its 100th anniversary, academics gathered to reflect on the landmark ruling’s mixed legacy.”)…
Continue Reading Today’s Dirt Law Round-Up: Zoning, Public Use, and Penn Central History

Although Knick knocked out the Supreme Court-created requirement that before an owner may assert a takings claim, he must first effectively exhaust available state procedures for obtaining compensation, it left the other ripeness requirement — that the government has made a “final decision” applying the challenged law to the owner — in place. Despite the Supreme Court in Pakdel noting that the final decision rule is a “relatively modest” requirement and does not require exhaustion of remedies (administrative or otherwise), some lower courts refuse to accept the message. Well here’s one that not only gets its wrong, it gets it seriously wrong.
Continue Reading Say What? CA4: Takings Claim Not Ripe Because Owner Could Always Change The Law