Monthly Archives: July 2019

On Friday, July 26th from 2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET the Land Use Committee of the ABA’s Section of State and Local Government Law is sponsoring a free (for Section members) informal webinar about the latest in takings law:Knick Picking Regulatory Takings: Did the Court Right a Wrong, or Wrong a Right? OCA presenters Dwight Merriam (featured to the left) and Robert Thomas (featured below) will discuss reaction to the decision — which has been as divided as the Court. Was this the conservative justices having their way? Is it a right versus left issue? Did that baby, stare decisis, get thrown out with the old ripeness bathwater? Will the federal courts become a forum resembling a small town zoning board of appeals, buried in trivial cases to the detriment of more important issues on the docke In this fast-paced half-hour, the presenters will ripen the ripeness problem for you, poke about the entrails of the decision to conjure up its true meaning, offer up a doyens’ debate on other pundits’ prognostications, and preview the in-depth program which will be held at the upcoming ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco (Thursday, August 8, 2019). For more details about the webinar, read Robert Thomas’ Inverse Condemnation Blog here. Knick v. Township of Scott(June 21, 2019) overruled the 34-year-old precedent in Williamson County requiring that federal takings claimants seek compensation in state court before being allowed to proceed in federal court.  

On June 21, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts “restor[ed] takings claims to the full-fledged constitutional status the Framers envisioned when they included the Clause among the other protections in the Bill of Rights.”Knick v. Township of Scott, 139 S. Ct. 2162 (2019). The Fifth Amendment’s “nor shall private property be taken without just compensation” is the clause Chief Justice Roberts references and is the bedrock protection afforded private property in the Bill of Rights, ensuring that full, fair, and just compensation is paid when a taking occurs. If rights guaranteed landowners in the Bill of Rights had so eroded that restorative action, and not merely interpretative, was necessary, there ought to be little dispute at the highest court. To the four justices who dissented, however, the Knick decision “smashes a hundred-plus years of legal rulings to smithereens.” Knick, 139 S. Ct. at 2183 (Kagan, J., dissenting). What could possibly have caused such a hot dispute in the fairly tepid world of eminent domain? Read on.

By OCA Members Gideon Kanner and Michael Berger IF THE DUKE OF YORK’S MEN THOUGHT they were being made to perform useless, repetitive tasks to no worthwhile end, they were in about the same condition as the American lawyers who were practicing tak- ings law in the 1970s and 1980s. During that period of time, hordes of lawyers representing the competing sides in regulatory taking cases were sent, figuratively, charging up the hill to the Supreme Court (which, to make the analogy complete, sits on top of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.) in an effort to do intellectual battle over the issue of remedies in regulatory taking cases. That issue was whether such takings call for constitutionally mandated “just compensation” as specified in the Fifth Amendment, or only for judicial invalidation of the constitutionally overreaching regulation. Read on.