Worth subscribing: a newer (the archives go back to this post, late 2025) from lawprof Stephen R. Miller, named “Euclid Land.” The title should give you a hint about what the topic is, “a conversation about land use reform with law professor, urban planner, and author Stephen R. Miller.”
Continue Reading New(ish) Substack: “Euclid Land” (Prof. Stephen Miller)
Here’s the latest in our continuing series of dirt law pilgrimages, where we visit the site of some of the more important cases in our favorite area of law. As every dirt lawyer knows, you can see photos, read descriptions, and study plat maps. But when it comes to understanding about the property at issue, nothing substitutes for getting your shoes in the dirt on-site, seeing the area for yourself, smelling the air. Walking the earth.
Continue Reading Property Pilgrimage: Nectow v. City of Cambridge (1928)
It was on this day in 1928 when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its second most famous decision about zoning, Nectow v. City of Cambridge, 277 U.S. 183 (1928). We say “second” because everyone knows that the first is the Court’s decision issued just two years earlier which generally upheld comprehensive use, height, and density regulations as a valid exercise of the government’s police power to regulate property uses to further the public health, safety, welfare, or morals. See Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U S. 365 (1926).
Continue Reading You Don’t Look A Day Over 98, Nectow v. City of Cambridge
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
Pictured: PLF’s Steve Davis, getting us started. We’re underway today with the academic symposium “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead” at the George Mason Law School. Cosponsored by the law school’s Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy, Mercatus Center, and our outfit Pacific Legal Foundation, the symposium is designed to focus the discussion of housing, zoning, and property rights (hot topics in the headlines), and ask the question: has Euclidean zoning outlived its usefulness? And if so, what, if anything, should replace it?
Continue Reading Symposium: “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead”