Land Use Prof Blog

Buchanan v. Warley Centennial Symposium on Race & Zoning

On November 5, 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisville’s race-based zoning ordinance in a landmark case, Buchanan v. Warley. The centennial of this famous case will be marked on Friday, November 10, 2017, at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law with a national symposium on Racial Justice in Zoning: 100 Years after Buchanan. The symposium will explore current racial injustices in land use, housing, and environmental conditions, as well as the history of race and zoning in the U.S. and Louisville. It will feature presentations on eight nationally renowned scholars, as well as a presentation on redlining in Louisville.

 

The symposium begins at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, November 10, and will be held in Room 275 of Wyatt Hall, which is the Brandeis School of Law on the University of Louisville’s Belknap campus, 2301 S. Third Street. The symposium is free and open to the public, and includes a free light continental breakfast at approximately 8:30 a.m., and a free lunch at approximately 1:00 p.m., both on a first-come, first-serve basis until food runs out. Please do not confirm your attendance; just come. If you have questions, please contact Tracie Cole at [email protected] or 502-852-1230. Individuals requiring accommodations should also contact her as soon as possible.

 

All attendees will be responsible for finding and paying for their own parking. Visitor parking passes are available for purchase through the U of L Parking website.  On this page, you are able to pay for and print your visitor permit that you will place on the dash board of your car while you are parked on campus.  You are also able to view maps and directions to campus.  To obtain your visitor pass, click on “Printable Visitor Permits”, under “Permits” click on “Get permits” and under “Customer Authentication, click on “create a guest account”.  From here, you will create an account, and be able to select the $5 per day printable visitor permit.  You are able to park in the Green Lot on 3^rd Street across from the Reynolds Lofts. The UofL Parking website also contains information about other visitor parking options, such as the lot at 4^th and Cardinal or the Floyd Street Garage, which charge based on the length of time you park. Also, the Speed Museum (not the University) operates a parking garage next to the Speed Museum on Third Street, which charges by the hour.

 

The symposium is sponsored by the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, with support from the Caudill-Little Speakers Fund, and co-sponsored by the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville.

 

The details of the symposium schedule and speaker information are provided below:

 

Buchanan v. Warley Symposium Agenda

Racial Justice in Zoning: 100 Years after Buchanan

Friday, November 10, 2017

 

8:30 a.m.: Light continental breakfast

8:40 a.m.: Dean's Welcome: Lars Smith, Interim Dean

8:50 a.m.: Organizers' Welcome: Tony Arnold, Symposium Chair

 

Session I: The History of Race, Zoning, and Buchanan Case

9:00 a.m.: Cate Fosl, The Buchanan Case and the Long Movement for Civil Rights in Louisville

9:20 a.m.: Laura Rothstein, What Would Louis Do?  The “Brandeis Brief” on Zoning and Its Present Impact on Racial Segregation

9:40 a.m.: Michael Wolf, Caudill-Little Distinguished Presenter, There’s Something Happening Here: Affordable Housing as a Nonstarter in the U.S. Supreme Court

10:20 a.m.: Q&A for Session I

10:30 a.m.: Break

 

Session II: Contemporary Perspectives on the Persistence of Racial Inequality in Land Use

10:40 a.m.: Cedric Merlin Powell, Race Displaced: Buchanan v. Warley and the Neutral Rhetoric of Due Process

11:00 a.m.: Michael Lens, Caudill-Little Distinguished Presenter, Why Segregation Matters: The Inequality of Opportunity

11:40 a.m.: Audrey McFarlane, Caudill-Little Distinguished Presenter, The Properties of Integration: Managing Discrimination Through Mixed Income Housing

12:20 p.m.: Tony Arnold, From Zoning Injustice to Environmental Injustice to Resilience Injustice

12:40 p.m.: Q&A for Session II

12:50 p.m.: Break

 

Session III: Luncheon Keynote

1:00 p.m.: Lunch

1:10 p.m.: Keynote by Sheryll Cashin, Caudill-Little Distinguished, Integration as a Means of Restoring Democracy and Opportunity

1:50 p.m.: Q&A for Keynote

 

Session IV: Bringing It Home

2:00 p.m.: Jeana Dunlap, Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class and Real Estate

2:15 p.m.: Final Remarks by Organizers and Conclusion

2:30 p.m.: Symposium Ends; Book-Signing by Sheryll Cashin

 

Speakers:

Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, J.D. is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use at the University of Louisville, where he teaches in the Brandeis School of Law and the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and directs the interdisciplinary Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibility.

Sheryll Cashin*, M.A., J.D., is Professor of Law at Georgetown University, and an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.

Jeana E. Dunlap, M.P.A., M.S., is the Director of Redevelopment Strategies, Louisville Forward.

Catherine Fosl, Ph.D., is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Louisville, where she also teaches in the History Department and directs the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research.

Michael Lens*, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, where he is the Associate Faculty Director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

Audrey McFarlane*, J.D., is the Dean Julius Isaacson Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore.

Cedric Merlin Powell, J.D., is Professor of Law at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, where he is the Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

Laura Rothstein, J.D., is a Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.

Michael Allan Wolf*, J.D., Ph.D., is the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law and Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

* denotes Caudill-Little Distinguished Presenter

Memphis Law Review Symposium--Submission Deadline Extended

The University of Memphis Law Review has extended its deadline for symposium abstract submissions until October 19th.  The revised call for papers below also clarifies that the full drafts will be due at the beginning of January.  

SYMPOSIUM TITLE:

The University of Memphis Law Review Annual Symposium

 

SYMPOSIUM DATE:

March 18, 2016 in Memphis, TN

 

ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM

It is a pleasure to invite you to The University of Memphis Law Review’s 2016 Annual Symposium. The theme this year is “Urban Revitalization: The Legal Implications in Restoring a City.”  As the name suggests, we will focus our attention on the legal issues of cities that face large turnover, abandonment, and blighted properties. The University of Memphis Law Review, organizer of the event, will host Symposium sessions at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at 1 North Front Street Memphis, TN 38103 on March 18, 2016.

 

The University of Memphis Law Review Symposium is held every spring on a topic of current interest to the student population, the legal community, and the city. The Symposium is a one-day CLE event. An issue of The Memphis Law Review will be published in conjunction.

 

This law symposium is unique in that it will be followed by a Community Summit at the Law School on March 19, 2016. The Summit is specifically designed for local, regional and state officials, civil leaders and others who put law and public policy into practice.

 

Topics of interest

With this symposiums focus on the legal implications of revitalizing distressed communities, neighborhoods, and properties, we are particularly interested in the intersection of law and policy as local government, together with community, institutional and philanthropic partners, deploy a wide variety of policies, strategies, and legal remedies to address blighted properties.  Our topic specifically covers the areas of municipal, real property, and environmental law.  Under this broad umbrella, we are particularly interested in articles addressing:

• Code enforcement laws and policies to defeat residential blight

• Mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcy and property abandonment

• Use of data in the fight against blighted property

• Criminal nuisance theory and procedure

• Health law and Healthy Homes theory and procedure

• Disparate impact in revitalizing neighborhoods

• Property rights in the light of community beautification projects

• Land banking functions, structures and legislative requirements

• Tax delinquency and issues of takings or eminent domain

• Disparate racial impact in neighborhood stabilization policies and practices

• HUD’s new affirmative fair housing policy in blighted urban neighborhoods

• Administrative versus judicial remedies in property revitalization

• Special purpose housing and environmental courts

• Public policies and programs for better health in homes and neighborhoods

 

Guide for authors

The deadline to submit abstracts is October 19, 2015. To submit your abstract, please click on the following link: http://law.bepress.com/expresso/

 

Click “Submit Now” and search for The University of Memphis Law Review. Follow the remaining prompts to upload and submit your article.  Please identify your submission as a symposium proposal so it will be sent to the correct editor.

 

You may also submit directly to The University of Memphis Law Review through email at [email protected]

Important Dates

Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 19, 2015

Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2015

Article due: January 1, 2016

 

Organizing committee:

For any additional questions about the event or about submitting an article, please email Kelly Masters Peevyhouse at [email protected].

 

I'm looking forward to the symposium in March.  I hope to see some of you there!

Jim K.

Memphis Law Review Symposium--Submission Deadline Extended

The University of Memphis Law Review has extended its deadline for symposium abstract submissions until October 19th.  The revised call for papers below also clarifies that the full drafts will be due at the beginning of January.  

SYMPOSIUM TITLE:

The University of Memphis Law Review Annual Symposium

 

SYMPOSIUM DATE:

March 18, 2016 in Memphis, TN

 

ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM

It is a pleasure to invite you to The University of Memphis Law Review’s 2016 Annual Symposium. The theme this year is “Urban Revitalization: The Legal Implications in Restoring a City.”  As the name suggests, we will focus our attention on the legal issues of cities that face large turnover, abandonment, and blighted properties. The University of Memphis Law Review, organizer of the event, will host Symposium sessions at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at 1 North Front Street Memphis, TN 38103 on March 18, 2016.

 

The University of Memphis Law Review Symposium is held every spring on a topic of current interest to the student population, the legal community, and the city. The Symposium is a one-day CLE event. An issue of The Memphis Law Review will be published in conjunction.

 

This law symposium is unique in that it will be followed by a Community Summit at the Law School on March 19, 2016. The Summit is specifically designed for local, regional and state officials, civil leaders and others who put law and public policy into practice.

 

Topics of interest

With this symposiums focus on the legal implications of revitalizing distressed communities, neighborhoods, and properties, we are particularly interested in the intersection of law and policy as local government, together with community, institutional and philanthropic partners, deploy a wide variety of policies, strategies, and legal remedies to address blighted properties.  Our topic specifically covers the areas of municipal, real property, and environmental law.  Under this broad umbrella, we are particularly interested in articles addressing:

• Code enforcement laws and policies to defeat residential blight

• Mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcy and property abandonment

• Use of data in the fight against blighted property

• Criminal nuisance theory and procedure

• Health law and Healthy Homes theory and procedure

• Disparate impact in revitalizing neighborhoods

• Property rights in the light of community beautification projects

• Land banking functions, structures and legislative requirements

• Tax delinquency and issues of takings or eminent domain

• Disparate racial impact in neighborhood stabilization policies and practices

• HUD’s new affirmative fair housing policy in blighted urban neighborhoods

• Administrative versus judicial remedies in property revitalization

• Special purpose housing and environmental courts

• Public policies and programs for better health in homes and neighborhoods

 

Guide for authors

The deadline to submit abstracts is October 19, 2015. To submit your abstract, please click on the following link: http://law.bepress.com/expresso/

 

Click “Submit Now” and search for The University of Memphis Law Review. Follow the remaining prompts to upload and submit your article.  Please identify your submission as a symposium proposal so it will be sent to the correct editor.

 

You may also submit directly to The University of Memphis Law Review through email at [email protected]

Important Dates

Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 19, 2015

Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2015

Article due: January 1, 2016

 

Organizing committee:

For any additional questions about the event or about submitting an article, please email Kelly Masters Peevyhouse at [email protected].

 

I'm looking forward to the symposium in March.  I hope to see some of you there!

Jim K.

Call for Papers: ALPS in Belfast, May 2016

Call for Papers for Association for Law, Property & Society 7th Annual Meeting

 

Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

 

May 20–21, 2016

 

The Association for Law, Property & Society (ALPS) is a scholarly organization for those engaged in scholarship on all aspects of property law and society. Its annual meeting brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss their work and to foster dialogue among those working in property law, policy, and theory. Prior meetings have averaged approximately 150 participants from across the globe. ALPS will hold its 7th meeting at Queen’s University Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom on May 20-21, 2016. An optional field-trip and opening reception are planned for the afternoon of May 19.

 

Registration and Submission Instructions

 

Submissions on any subject related to property law are welcome. ALPS has a strong commitment to international and interdisciplinary diversity, and paper topics reflecting that commitment are encouraged. ALPS accepts both individual paper submissions and proposals for fully formed panels (usually 3 to 5 presenters). Submissions may be for full paper drafts or early works-in-progress. Submissions should include an abstract of no more than 250 words that indicates the name of the submitting scholar, the scholar’s institution, and an email contact for the scholar. If submitting a fully formed panel, please insure that an abstract for each paper is included in the submission and that each abstract clearly identifies the fully formed panel the paper is a part of.

 

Registration and paper/panel submission information is available at

http://www.law.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/sites/ALPS-2016-belfast/

The deadline for submitting papers and panels is February 1, 2016, but registration for the conference will continue to be available after that date.

 

A discounted early registration rate of £110 (GBP) is available until February 1, 2016. After that date, the registration rate is £150 (GBP). The registration rate for full-time students (JD, PhD, or other program) is £30 (GBP).

 

Notification

ALPS will notify authors and panel proposers of acceptance of their individual submissions or proposed panel on a rolling basis, generally within three weeks after the date of submission.

After the submission deadline of February 1, 2016, ALPS will thematically group accepted papers and panels. Concurrent panels will be held on both days of the conference with each panel session lasting approximately 90 minutes and including both individual presentations and time for questions from the audience.

 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to [email protected]

Sink or Swim: In Search of a Model for Coastal City Climate Change Resilience

New York City, like other major cities around the world, has acknowledged the problem of climate change, undertaken a comprehensive risk assessment, created a suite of adaptation and mitigation planning initiatives, and begun to implement policies to both decrease the city’s contribution to the problem and make the city less vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In an article published in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, I provide a detailed analysis of the city’s climate change resilience initiatives and conclude that many of the city’s initiatives provide a model for other coastal communities, but the city's initiatives nevertheless fall short of what is likely required to sufficiently moderate harm from dangerous interference with the climate system.

The city’s robust suite of initiatives put it ahead of the pack as compared to most other U.S. municipalities, especially with respect to comprehensive reform of zoning and building codes, integrated mitigation and adaptation planning, transparent climate change-related data analysis initiatives, and commitment to reduce GHG emissions 80% by 2050 from 2005 levels and progress toward that goal. However, the city also faces a host of wicked policy binds, ineffective regional structures, a lack of support at the federal level, and numerous conditions that constrain its ability to remain resilient. In light of this, the “toughness” theme that runs throughout the city’s plans risks undermining its robust data analysis and reporting initiatives by instilling in New Yorkers a false sense of security with respect to both the scope of the problem and their local government’s ability to protect them from it. The city faces an equally wicked policy bind with respect to waterfront development. Given the foreseeable risks of increasingly intensive and frequent coastal storms, flooding and storm surges, coastal municipalities must carefully evaluate their waterfront development policies to assure consistency with future climate risks and adopt regulations that curtail or eliminate waterfront development in high-risk areas, encourage or require relocation away from vulnerable areas, and take maximum advantage of opportunities to develop natural flood-mitigation infrastructure.

See Sink or Swim: In Search of a Model for Coastal City Climate Change Resilience, 40 Columbia J. Envt’l L. 433 (2015), available here.

 

Post by Sarah J. Adams-Schoen, Assistant Professor of Law and Director of Touro Law’s Institute for Land Use & Sustainable Development Law, and managing author of the blog Touro Law Land Use.

Online Professional Development Course in Adaptive Planning & Resilience

Land Use Prof colleagues -- please share the following information about an online self-paced course in adaptive planning and resilience as broadly as possible.  It's especially relevant for professionals who are engaged in planning and would benefit from skills to make their planning processes more adaptive and resilience-oriented.  Students, professors, and other professionals are welcome too.  Thanks for your interest and help!  All best wishes, Tony Arnold

I’m writing to let you know about an online self-paced professional development course in adaptive planning and resilience.  This course is aimed at any professional who engages in planning under conditions of uncertainty, complexity, or unstable conditions, whether in the public sector, private sector, local community, or multi-stakeholder partnerships. 

The course is ideal for professionals in sectors such as urban planning, community development water supply, water quality, disasters/hazards, environmental protection, land management, forestry, natural resources management, ecosystem restoration, climate change, public infrastructure, housing, sustainability, community resilience, energy, and many others.  I hope that you and the employees and/or members of your organization will consider enrolling in this course.

 The 12-hour course is offered by the University of Louisville for a cost of $150 and is taught by Professor Tony Arnold, a national expert in adaptive planning and resilience, and a team of professionals engaged in various aspects of adaptive planning.  The online lectures are asynchronous, and the course is self-paced; this offering will last until November 22.

 More information is provided below and at the registration web page: http://louisville.edu/law/flex-courses/adaptive-planning.  This offering of the course begins October 12 but registration will be accepted through November 15 due to the self-pacing of the course.  We are seeking AICP CM credits for the course in partnership with the Kentucky Chapter of the American Planning Association, but cannot make any representations or promises until our application is reviewed. 

Please share this blog post or information with anyone who might be interested.  Please contact me at [email protected], if you have any questions. 

Adaptive Planning and Resilience

Online and self-paced

Oct. 12 – Nov. 22, 2015

Adaptive Planning and Resilience is a professional development course in which professionals will develop the knowledge and skills to design and implement planning processes that will enable their governance systems, organizations, and/or communities to adapt to changing conditions and sudden shocks or disturbances.

Adaptive planning is more flexible and continuous than conventional planning processes, yet involves a greater amount of goal and strategy development than adaptive management methods. It helps communities, organizations, and governance systems to develop resilience and adaptive capacity: the capacity to resist disturbances, bounce back from disasters, and transform themselves under changing and uncertain conditions. Adaptive planning is needed most when systems or communities are vulnerable to surprise catastrophes, unprecedented conditions, or complex and difficult-to-resolve policy choices.

The course will cover the elements of adaptive planning and resilient systems, the legal issues in adaptive planning, how to design and implement adaptive planning processes, and case studies (including guest speakers) from various communities and organizations that are employing adaptive planning methods.  Enrollees will have the opportunity to design or redesign an adaptive planning process for their own professional situation and get feedback from course instructors.

The six-week course totals about 12 hours broken into 30-minute segments. It is conducted online and is asynchronous. Cost is $150.

 About Professor Tony Arnold

Professor Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold is the Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use at the University of Louisville, where he teaches in both the Brandeis School of Law and the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and directs the interdisciplinary Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibility. Professor Arnold is an internationally renowned and highly-cited scholar who studies how governance systems and institutions – including planning, law, policy, and resource management – can adapt to changing conditions and disturbances in order to improve social-ecological resilience. He has won numerous teaching awards, including the 2013 Trustee’s Award, the highest award for a faculty member at the University of Louisville.

Professor Arnold has clerked for a federal appellate judge on the 10th Circuit and practiced law in Texas, including serving as a city attorney and representing water districts. He served as Chairman of the Planning Commission of Anaheim, California, and on numerous government task forces and nonprofit boards. He had a land use planning internship with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, did rural poverty work in Kansas, and worked for two members of Congress. Professor Arnold received his Bachelor of Arts, with Highest Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1987 from the University of Kansas. He received his Doctor of Jurisprudence, with Distinction, in 1990 from Stanford University, where he co-founded the Stanford Law & Policy Review and was a Graduate Student Fellow in the Stanford Center for Conflict and Negotiation. He has affiliations with interdisciplinary research centers at six major universities nationwide and is a part of an interdisciplinary collaboration of scholars studying adaptive governance and resilience.

 Professor Arnold will be joined in co-teaching the course by a team of his former students who are

professionals knowledgeable in adaptive planning. They include:

• Brian      O’Neill, an aquatic ecologist and environmental planner in Chicago
• Heather      Kenny, a local-government and land-use lawyer in California and adjunct      professor at Lincoln Law School of Sacramento
• Sherry      Fuller, a business manager at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy in Orange      County, California, and former community redevelopment project manager
• Andrew      Black, who is Associate Dean of Career Planning and Applied Learning at      Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a former field      representative for two U.S. Senators in New Mexico
• Andrea      Pompei Lacy, AICP, who directs the Center for Hazards Research and Policy      Development at the University of Louisville
• Jennifer-Grace      Ewa, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Inequality and the Provision of Open Space      at the University of Denver
• Alexandra      Chase, a recent graduate of the Brandeis School of Law who has worked on      watershed and urban resilience issues with the Center for Land Use and      Environmental Responsibility and now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Dates

October 12 – November 22, 2015,

Online, asynchronous, and self-paced

Cost

$150

For more information

Visit louisville.edu/law/flex-courses.

 

Great Opportunity for Law Students Writing on Land Use and Related Topics

Law students writing on land use and related topics should consider submitting their papers to the ABA State and Local Government Law Young Lawyers Section's annual writing competition. The winning article will be published in The Urban Lawyer, the journal of the American Bar Association (ABA) State and Local Government Law Section. The Urban Lawyer is published quarterly with UMKC Law faculty members as its editors and UMKC law students as its staff members.

The journal publishes articles on legal and policy issues relevant to state and local government law, including land use and development, public education, state and local government law and ethics, constitutional law, real estate development, and environmental law. The journal has an extremely large circulation with nearly 6,000 hard-copy subscribers and nearly 3,000 online subscribers. Articles in it have been cited by the Supreme Court and numerous Courts of Appeals and state supreme courts and are also reprinted in many legal treatises. Washington and Lee University’s Law Journal Rankings place The Urban Lawyer among the top ten peer-edited law journals most cited by other journals and among the top twenty peer-edited law journals most cited by cases, and rank the journal as the third-highest rated peer-edited law journal that publishes articles relating to public policy, politics, and the law.

In addition to publishing in the Urban Lawyer, the winner will be invited to the ABA State and Local Government Law Section's 2016 spring meeting in Puerto Rico to present the winning article. Travel and lodging expenses will be reimbursed, up to $1,500.

Articles should range between 25 and 50 pages and should be properly footnoted.

For more information see here. To join the ABA State & Local Government Law Section, click here or call 1-800-285-2221. ABA law student members are free.

 

Sarah J. Adams-Schoen, Assistant Professor of Law and Director of Touro Law’s Institute for Land Use & Sustainable Development Law, and managing author of the blog Touro Law Land Use.

Interdisciplinary Readings on Land Use: Environmental Justice and Land Use

The use of land use planning, regulation, and law to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities and low- and moderate-income people has a long history and many manifestations in the U.S.  Among them are race-based zoning, exclusionary zoning, expulsive zoning, gentrification and displacement of residents through redevelopment, unequal provision of infrastructure, and inequities resulting from sprawl. 

A significant body of literature on environmental justice is helpful to understanding the underlying issues of distributive, procedural, remedial, and social justice in land use.  Environmental justice is about the fair treatment of all races, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic groups in environmental, natural resources, and land use policies and practices.  Land use decisions in the United States have placed toxic chemicals, polluting facilities, and industrial land uses near and among low-income people and people of color.  They have also produced inequitable patterns of – and access to – environmental goods and community infrastructure, such as parks, transit options, trees, well-functioning water and sewer systems, clean and vibrant riverfront areas and restored streams, affordable housing opportunities, recreational and civic facilities, and the like.  At one time, low-income neighborhoods of color were the only places in some metropolitan areas that lacked paved roads and water and sewer services, a pattern that led some courts to find discriminatory intent by municipal officials just on the face of the disparate conditions (e.g., a Yick Wo type of analysis). 

There are many environmental-justice books in other disciplines that are well worth reading.  Some of my favorites are (alphabetical by author last name): 

Spencer Banzhaf, The Political Economy of Environmental Justice (Stanford University Press 2012). 

Ana Isabel Baptista, Just Policies? A Multiple Case Study of State Environmental Justice Policies (Proquest 2008). 

Bunyan Bryant, ed. Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions (Island Press 1995). 

Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Westview Press 1990). 

Robert D. Bullard, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (South End Press 1993). 

Robert D. Bullard, ed., Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (Sierra Club Books 1994). 

Robert D. Bullard, ed., The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution (Sierra Club Books 2005). 

Robert D. Bullard, ed., Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (MIT Press 2007). 

Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres, Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta (Island Press 2000). 

Susan L. Cutter, Hazards, Vulnerabilities and Environmental Justice (Routledge 2012). 

Daniel Faber, ed., The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States (Guilford Press 1998). 

Susan S. Fainstein, The Just City (Cornell University Press 2010). 

Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Johns Hopkins University Press 1995). 

Ryan Holifield, Michael Porter, and Gordon Walker, Spaces of Environmental Justice (John Wiley & Sons 2011). 

Kathryn M. Mutz, Garcy C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Island Press 2002). 

Laura Pulido, Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest (University of Arizona Press 1996).

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Environmental Justice : Creating Equity, Reclaiming Democracy: Creating Equity, Reclaiming Democracy (Oxford University Press 2002). 

Thomas Sikor, The Justices and Injustices of Ecosystem Services (Routledge/Earthscan 2013). 

Gerald R. Visgilio and Diana M. Whitelaw, Our Backyard: A Quest for Environmental Justice (Rowman & Littlefield 2003).

Gordon Walker, Environmental Justice: Concepts, Evidence and Politics (Routledge 2012). 

Laura Westra and Bill E. Lawson, eds., Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice (Rowman & Littlefield 2001). 

In addition to the above listed books, there are two books by legal scholars that take broadly interdisciplinary perspectives on environmental justice and would be excellent resources to begin exploring the concept of environmental justice, particularly as it relates to land use.  One is by the late Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, who is co-directs the Urban Law Center at Fordham Law School: From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press 2001).  It is a classic in the field. 

The other is a book that I wrote for the American Planning Association and its Planning Advisory Service Report series: Fair and Healthy Land Use: Environmental Justice and Planning (APA 2007 – it’s PAS Report No. 549/550).  My Fair and Healthy Land Use book explores: what is environmental justice (ch. 1), environmental justice and land use (ch. 2), comprehensive planning and environmental justice, including key environmental justice planning principles (ch. 3), regulatory tools (ch. 4), community participation (ch. 5), the environmental impact assessment as a tool for implementing environmental justice (ch. 6), community infrastructure, housing, redevelopment, and brownfields (ch. 7), and constraints to incorporating environmental justice principles in land-use plans and controls (ch. 8).  The book builds on my 1998 article “Planning Milagros: Environmental Justice and Land Use Regulation” in the Denver University Law Review, which included an extensive empirical study of zoning patterns, comparing low-income high-minority census tracts with high-income low-minority census tracts in 7 cities nationwide. 

Coming Next: Ecosystem Services

Interdisciplinary Readings on Land Use: Land Ethics

Individual and collective decisions about the use of land are fundamentally normative decisions, whether consciously made on the basis of a set of ethics and norms or reached through governance systems with implicit, imbedded normative underpinnings.  What do ethicists have to say about land use that could be interesting to land use legal scholars?  Quite a lot, it turns out. 

If you have time to read only one book on the topic, I’d highly recommend Timothy Beatley, Ethical Land Use: Principles of Policy and Planning (Johns Hopkins University Press 1994).  When I taught a land use seminar at Chapman University School of Law, I assigned this 300-page paperback book that covers land use from a diverse range of ethical perspectives.  The outline of the book is as follows:

Part I: Ethical Framework

1. Land-Use Policy and Ethical Choices

2. The Nature of Ethical Discourse about Land Use

Part II: Sets of Land-Use Ethics and Obligations

3. Utilitarian and Market Perspectives on Land Use

4. Culpability and the Prevention of Land-Use Harms

5. Land-Use Rights

6. Distributive Obligations in Land Use

7. Ethical Duties to the Environment

8. Land-Use Obligations to Future Generations

Part III: Ethics and Individual Liberties

9. Paternalism and Voluntary Risk-taking

10. Expectations and Promises in Land-Use Policy

11. Private Property, Land-Use Profits, and the Takings Issue

Part IV: Ethics, Community, and Politics

12. Defining Life-Style and Community Character

13. Duties beyond Borders: Interjurisdictional Land-Use Ethics

14. The Ethics of Land-Use Politics

Part V: Conclusions

15. Principles of Ethical Land Use

Of course, many of you were probably expecting me to recommend Aldo Leopold’s writings on his land ethic, which are wonderful and well worth reading.  Leopold urged a holistic view of the land community as encompassing both nature and humans, and a conservation ethic in how land is used and managed.  The classic is Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There (Oxford University Press 1949), but other collections of his writings are also worth reading, including For the Health of the Land (edited by J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle; Island Press 1999), and The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (edited by Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott; University of Wisconsin Press 1991).  Julianne Lutz Newton wrote an exciting biography of Leopold: Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac (Island Press 2006).  Writings by Wendell Berry and Wallace Stegner, discussed in a previous blog post, also articulate a land and environmental conservation ethic.

As many of you know, legal scholar Eric Freyfogle at the University of Illinois has written a number of highly important interdisciplinary books that integrate land ethics (including the writings of Leopold, Berry, historian Donald Worster, and others) with legal issues.  My favorite remains Bounded People, Boundless Land: Envisioning a New Land Ethic (Island Press 1998), which is unusually articulate, inspiring, and engaging.  Eric has commented on several occasions that he considers some of his later works his best writing, and all are certainly excellent and well worth reading.  Among them are: The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (Island Press 2003), Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground (Yale University Press 2006), and On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land (Beacon Press 2007).  Still, I stick by my special regard for his Bounded People, Boundless Land book.

J. Baird Callicott is a philosopher who has built on Leopold and yet gone beyond Leopold’s perspective with a strongly non-anthropocentric viewpoint.  His books are well worth reading, including In Defense of the Land Ethic (State University of New York Press 1989) and Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (State University of New York Press 1999).  Three other environmental ethics classics with relevance to land use are Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Temple University Press 1988), Bryan G. Norton, Toward Unity among Environmentalists (Oxford University Press 1991), and Laura Westra, An Environmental Proposal for Ethics: The Principle of Integrity (Rowman & Littlefield 1994). 

Despite the trenchant critique and normative guidance found in many writings on land ethics and conservation philosophies, the reality is that the land use system in the United States is characterized by pragmatism and ethical pluralisms at best.  I discussed this point in my article The Structure of the Land Use Regulatory System in the United States, 22 Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 441 (2007), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1020305.  Nonetheless, important ethical imperatives can be found in pragmatic perspectives on land use, as explored in an outstanding book by Ben A. Minteer: The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America (MIT Press 2006).  Minteer examines the ideas of four major land-and-environment thinkers and reformers in the American 20^th Century – Liberty Hyde Bailey, Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold – to illuminate an environmental pragmatism focused more on civic and policy reform than on picking sides in the anthropocentric/land-use versus ecocentric/environmental-preservation debates.  I highly recommend this informative and well-written book. 

By now (if you made it this far!), you’ve probably noticed that most of these writings involve environmental ethics and don’t really delve too much into social justice, distributive justice, procedural justice, and the like.  I will tackle some of those issues, albeit mostly at the land use-environment intersection, in my next post on interdisciplinary readings in environmental justice and land use. 

Coming Next: Environmental Justice and Land Use

 

 

Fennell and Peñalver on Exactions Creep

For those of you who have not already figured out exactly how land use planning officials are expected to proceed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, Lee Fennell (Chicago) and Eduardo Peñalver (Cornell) have posted Exactions Creep, __ Sup. Ct. Rev. ___ (forthcoming).   Rather than deny that the Court has aggravated the uncertainty faced by local governments, Lee and Eduardo explore the nature of the confusion in the Court's exactions jurisprudence and call for a significant revision.  Here's the abstract:

How can the Constitution protect landowners from government exploitation without disabling the machinery that protects landowners from each other? The Supreme Court left this central question unanswered — and indeed unasked — in Koontz v St. Johns River Water Management District. The Court’s exactions jurisprudence, set forth in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, Dolan v. City of Tigard, and now Koontz, requires the government to satisfy demanding criteria for certain bargains — or proposed bargains — implicating the use of land. Yet because virtually every restriction, fee, or tax associated with the ownership or use of land can be cast as a bargain, the Court must find some way to hive off the domain of exactions from garden variety land use regulations. This it refused to do in Koontz, opting instead to reject boundary principles that it found normatively unstable. By beating back one form of exactions creep — the possibility that local governments will circumvent a too-narrowly drawn circle of heightened scrutiny — the Court left land use regulation vulnerable to the creeping expansion of heightened scrutiny under the auspices of its exactions jurisprudence. In this paper, we lay out this dilemma and suggest that it should lead the Court to rethink its exactions jurisprudence, and especially its grounding in the Takings Clause, rather than the Due Process Clause. The sort of skepticism about bargaining reflected in the Court’s exactions cases, we suggest, finds its most plausible roots in rule-of-law concerns implicated by land use dealmaking. With those concerns in mind, we consider alternatives that would attempt to reconcile the Court’s twin interests in reining in governmental power over property owners and in keeping the gears of ordinary land use regulation running in ways that protect the property interests of those owners.

Jim K.

Urban Decay Theory v. Broken Windows Theory

Brent White (Arizona) , Simone Sepe (Arizona) and Saura Masconale (AZ-Gov't & PP) have published Urban Decay, Austerity, and the Rule of Law, 64. Emory L.J. 1 (2014).  In the article, the authors offer a "make 'gov', not war" alternative to the Broken Windows Theory (BWT) and its support for order-maintenance policing.  Building upon an intuitively compelling social contract theory insight, the article sets out the theoretical and empirical cases for the authors’ contention that sustained investment in highly visible, essential local public goods provides crucial support for rule of law. Focusing on the refusals of the U.S. and Michigan governments to bail out Detroit and avoid the need for it to file for bankruptcy, the authors use their Urban Decay Theory (UDT) to support their proposal that all municipal governments receive at least some level of fiscal insurance to sustain continuous investment in urban infrastructure, which, according to the UDT is predictive of citizen commitment to rule of law.

At the invitation of the editors of the Emory Law Journal, I wrote a response to Urban Decay for the Emory Law Journal Online.  In "All Good Things Flow . . .":  Rule of Law, Public Goods, and the Divided American Metropolis , 64 Emory L. J. Online 2017 (2014),  I welcome the article’s introduction of the rule of law paradigm to domestic urban policy, find fault with its selection of public goods that purportedly influence rule of law, and contend that the UDT has far greater potential than the poor support it can offer the authors’ flawed policy proposal. By conceptualizing the domestic urban policy goal as rule of law rather than order, the authors open measurements of success to go beyond crime rates and majoritarian perceptions of personal safety. Without losing the groundedness necessary for empirical investigation, rule of law can incorporate ideal aspects of lawful order that address sustainability and inclusion of minority perceptions of legitimacy. While the White/Sepe/Masconale article does not succeed in constructing as compelling an understanding of the most salient public goods, an improved analysis of the root causes of the fiscal degradation of America’s legacy cities can unlock a potentially valuable reframing of urban, metropolitan, and regional policy debates.

In focusing their policy proposal on fiscal guarantees for municipal creditors, the authors, from my perspective, have missed the role that the urban-suburban divide has played in the inability of city governments to provide basic public goods.  But, their expansion of the public policy goal to rule of law allows us to get a more holistic picture of the foundation of a truly inclusive, flourishing community. All in all, I think that, by altering the paradigm from order maintenance to rule of law, the authors have, in formulating the Urban Decay Theory, offered a useful complement to the Broken Windows Theory rather than a truly competitive alternative to it.  

 

Jim K.

Malloy on Land Use Law and Disability

Cambridge University Press has just announced the release of Robin Paul Malloy's new book, Land Use Law and Disability: Planning and Zoning for Accessible Communities (2014).   In it, Robin argues for a new generation of inclusive design standards to foster more housing opportunities for persons living with mobility impairments.  Robin's scholarly work in this area has further developed land use law as a basis, independent of civil rights statutes and constitutional guarantees, for inclusionary claims made by marginalized persons.

Jim K.

Should More Land Use Professors be Libertarians?

In case you missed it, I am cross-posting something I initially posted to Concurring Opinions, that may be of interest to our readers here.  Parts II and III to follow:

Many professors who study land use and local government law, myself included, consider ourselves leftists rather than libertarians. That is, we have some confidence in the ability of government to solve social problems. Nevertheless, were you to pick up a randomly selected piece of left-leaning land use or local government scholarship (including my own) you would likely witness a searing indictment of the way local governments operate. You would read that the land use decisionmaking process is usually a conflict between deep-pocketed developers who use campaign contributions to elect pro-growth politicians and affluent homeowners who use their ample resources to resist change that might negatively affect their property values. Land use “planning” – never a great success to begin with – has largely been displaced by the “fiscalization” of land use, in which land use decisions are based primarily on a proposed land use’s anticipated contribution to (or drain upon) a municipality’s revenues. Public schools in suburban areas have essentially been privatized due to exclusionary zoning practices, and thus placed off limits to the urban poor, whereas public schools in cities have been plundered by ravenous teachers’ unions.

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Anthromes, Novel Ecosystems, and other new vocab words

If you are like me, you have a humongous pile short stack of articles that you hope to one day find time to read. Summer is when I get my chance to make a dent in this continuously replenishing tower of fun.

Today, I delved into some 2013 articles by geographer Erle Ellis and was struck by how helpful they are for thinking about land use, particularly in the context of land conservation, working landscapes, and a changing world.

In Sustaining Biodiversity and People in the World's Anthropogenic Biomes, 5 Current Opinion in Env't Sustainability 368 (2013), Ellis introduces me to a new term: anthrome. A foreshortening of anthropogenic biome, anthromes are ecosystems characterized by human involvement. That is, these are landscapes shaped by humans. Building off of Crutzen's idea of the Anthropocene, Ellis explains that 3/4 of the terrestrial biosphere can now be described as anthromes. What is the implication of this? Well that is perhaps harder to pin down. If we are are shaping ecosystems, maybe we have a bigger role to play in ensuring the viability of the systems and protecting biodiversity. When anthromes replace wildlands, perhaps we need to shift some of our conservation efforts to such lands. Ellis' research suggests a promising message: that anthromes may actually still sustain native species and we can increase the benefits of these lands to humans while protecting for biodiversity. Sounds good to me, but sounds like a tough road ahead. This work ties into scholarly discussions of novel ecosystems, something I am finding increasingly helpful for think about land conservation. Novel ecosystems are new types of biomes that have no real precedent or previous corollary and therefore our approach to land conservation (and resiliency) must confront this concept when thinking about what is the world that we want to protect.

In Used Planet: A Global History, 110 PNAS 7978 (2013), Erle joins with a crew of folks from the Global Land Project to discuss patterns of land use change and land use intensification over time. Those land use history buffs among us might find this piece particularly intriguing as the authors describe land-use intensification as "adaptive processes by which human populations systematically adopt increasingly productive land-use technologies." Under this lens, the authors track two different models for global land-use history. Ending with a hopeful note, the authors suggest that the next stage of land use may be one where we become more efficient and may succeed in reversing environmental impacts of prior land use. Thus, both projects end with optimistic thoughts about the future (but calling on us to make tough decisions and do hard work).  I look forward to continuing projects from this group.

Liveblogging ALPS session 3

So many interesting sessions here making it hard to choose which panel to attend, but I had to give some more co-blogger love and check out Ken Stahl's paper and the panel on local government law.

Nestor Davidson (Fordham Law School) started the panel off with a talk on administrative law at the local level. fascinating stuff and unquestionably important for us land-usey types. Many land use decisions are made or carried out by local agencies and I had never given much thought to how really different admin law is at the local stage. I was particularly taken aback by the lack of separation of powers and the increased blurring of public and private lines.

Ken Stahl presented a paper/essay/book review building off "The Great American City" by Sampson. Here is the official abstract:

Urban policymakers have long debated whether to focus on people or on places. Give poor people the means to leave deteriorated neighborhoods, or attempt to bolster such neighborhoods by reinforcing the social norms of the community? Direct the police to crack down on low-level crime, or foster informal connections between the police and local institutions? Definitive answers to these questions have been elusive, but Robert Sampson’s new book GREAT AMERICAN CITY provides some needed insight. Sampson demonstrates that people are ineluctable products of their local environments, and he concludes that “place-based” policies that focus on building community are more likely to be successful than policies premised on the assumption of individual mobility and choice. This essay revisits the “people v. places” debate in light of GREAT AMERICAN CITY. Though the book is sure to have a tremendous impact on that debate, Sampson devotes relatively little attention to the policy implications of his work, and thus I attempt to articulate and probe what I see as the book’s major policy implications. Principally, I interpret Sampson’s work as an implicit challenge to the predominant public choice model of local government, which conceptualizes urban residents as mobile individuals who make locational choices regardless of social context. Seen in this light, GREAT AMERICAN CITY raises important questions about the wisdom of policymakers’ longstanding reliance on the public choice model, but also leaves much to speculation. I further argue that in light of Sampson’s findings, efforts to aid disadvantaged communities might be most effective if they undertook to induce people to stay in such communities.

I have not yet read this book and really enjoyed hearing Ken's description and the concerns it raised for him with regard to neighborhood structure and power.

Ashira Ostrow (Hofstra) rounded out the panel with a talk on the strange weighted voting system used in Hudson, NY. Not clear to me (or Ashira) whether the system is constitutional (based on the one person - one vote requirement) but if so it could present an interesting structure for local governments where representative's vote are based on their number of constituents.

Liveblogging ALPS 2014

Well it is that time of the year again and most of the Land Use Profs' crew is attending the Annual Meeting of the Association of Law, Property, and Society. This year, the conference is in Vancouver, B.C. and I have to say this is the prettiest location for ALPS so far.

I spoke on a riveting panel on conservation easements this morning (shocker I know) and now get to sit back and listen to co-blogger Jim Kelly's talk: “‘That Side was made for you and me’: Unauthorized Use of Vacant Property in Inner City Neighbourhoods.” In this packed room, I enjoy the fact that Jim started with a song. His presentation discussed what might be categorized as a type of self-help improvement. Here is the official abstract:

This essay explores the social function of unauthorized uses of vacant properties, both houses and lots, in inner-city neighborhoods. Underutilized properties, particularly those abandoned by their owners, present obvious opportunities for non-owners to engage in uses that may not benefit them personally and/or may (or may not) confer social benefits. From squatters and scrappers to guerilla gardeners and anti-foreclosure activists, acquisitive and expressive “property outlaws” challenge the formality and durability of land ownership claims. By looking at contemporary phenomena such as Philadelphia Green, Take Back the Land, and Indiana’s Good Samaritan Law, the essay will sort out the constructive possibilities for supporting, ignoring and actively opposing unauthorized use of vacant inner-city properties.

The panel, which focused on violence and authorized/unauthorized uses of property. I particularly enjoyed Robin Hickey's paper about whether you can take back property that others have taken from you (in fancy terms: the right to recapture). I think my property law students would be most intrigued by Abraham Bell's talk about possession (they always want to talk about the phrase "possession is nine-tenths of the law").

 

Dyal-Chand on Sharing the Cathedral

Rashmi Dyal-Chand (Northeastern) has posted Sharing the Cathedral, 46 Conn. L. Rev. 647 (2013).  Here's the abstract:

Sharing is an indispensable part of American property law, often mediating the harsh implications of ownership rights. Yet sharing is also a hidden component of this legal structure. In both theory and doctrinal manifestations, sharing is overshadowed by the iconic property right of exclusion. This Article argues that property law suffers a critical loss from its under-recognition of sharing because it fails to use sharing to correct distributional failures in a world of increasingly scarce resources. Sharing could be the basis for developing a rich range of outcomes in common property disputes. Instead, as described by Calabresi and Melamed in their famed article on remedies, outcomes are tagged to exclusion in the form of blanket property rules and “keep out” signs. As a result, sharing currently functions merely to create very narrow exceptions to broad rights of ownership. To correct this failure, this Article presents a model for sharing as a preferred outcome in property disputes. Sharing as an outcome is a powerful means of addressing property inequalities, limiting harmful externalities, preserving efficiency, and harnessing the extraordinary potential of outcomes in property law.

Jim K.

 

Alexander on Property's Ends

Greg Alexander (Cornell) has posted Property's Ends: The Publicness of Private Law Values, 99 Iowa L. Rev. 1257 (2014).  Here's the abstract:

Property theorists commonly suppose that property has as its ends certain private values, such as individual autonomy and personal security. This Article contends that property’s real end is human flourishing, that is, living a life that is as fulfilling as possible. Human flourishing, although property’s ultimate end, is neither monistic or simple. Rather, it is inclusive and comprises multiple values. Those values, the content of human flourishing, derives, at least in part, from an understanding of the sorts of beings we are ― social and political.  A consequence of this conception of the human condition is that the values of which human flourishing is constitutive ― property’s ends― are public as well as private. Further, the public and private values that serve as property’s ends are mutually dependent for their realization. Hence, any account of property that assigns it solely to the private sphere, categorically removed from public values, is incoherent.

Jim K.

Rissman, Owley, Thompson and Shaw on Adapting Conservation Easements to Climate Change

Adena Rissman (Ecology-Wisconsin), (our very own) Jessie Owley (SUNY-Buffalo), Buzz Thompson (Stanford) and Rebecca Shaw (Env. Defense Fund) have posted Adapting Conservation Easements to Climate Change, Conservation Letters (2014).  Here's the abstract: 

Perpetual conservation easements (CEs) are popular for restricting development and land use, but their fixed terms create challenges for adaptation to climate change. The increasing pace of environmental and social change demands adaptive conservation instruments. To examine the adaptive potential of CEs, we surveyed 269 CEs and interviewed 73 conservation organization employees. While only 2% of CEs mentioned climate change, the majority of employees were concerned about climate change impacts. CEs share the fixed-boundary limits typical of protected areas with additional adaptation constraints due to permanent, partial property rights. CEs often have multiple, potentially conflicting purposes that protect against termination but complicate decisions about principled, conservation-oriented adaptation. Monitoring is critical for shaping adaptive responses, but only 35% of CEs allowed organizations to conduct ecological monitoring. Additionally, CEs provided few requirements or incentives for active stewardship of private lands. We found four primary options for changing land use restrictions: CE amendment, management plan revisions, approval of changes through discretionary consent, and updating laws or policies codified in the CE. Conservation organizations, funders, and the IRS should promote processes for principled adaptation in CE terms, provide more active stewardship of CE lands, and consider alternatives to the CE tool.

Jim K.

 

McLaughlin on Perpetual Conservation Easements in the 21st Century

Nancy McLaughlin (Utah) has posted Perpetual Conservation Easements in the 21st Century: What Have We Learned and Where Should We Go from Here?, 2013 Utah L. Rev. 687.  Here's the abstract:

The public is investing billions of dollars in conservation easements, which now protect an estimated 40 million acres throughout the United States. But all is not well. Uncertainties in the law and abusive practices threaten to undermine public confidence in and the effectiveness of conservation easements as a land protection tool. This short article is part of a series of articles published in the law review discussing conservation easements, with a focus on what we have learned thus far and where we should go from here. This article sets the stage by describing the dramatic growth in the use of conservation easements, the various laws that impact easement creation and administration, a timeline of important legal and policy developments, and the recent surprising lack of certainty and consensus regarding what it means to protect land “in perpetuity” or “forever” with a conservation easement. The article concludes by discussing how the perpetuity issue might be productively resolved.

 

Jim K.