OCA Crystal Eagle Award Winner and Law Professor David Callies Authors Book on Landmark Knick Case

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Knick v. Township of Scott has been aptly described as one of the most influential property rights cases of the last decade. In Knick, the Court explicitly overturned the second prong of the so-called Williamson County ripeness test that required property owners to seek a remedy through state action –usually just compensation – for the alleged taking before coming to federal court. In David Callies new book, published by the American Bar Association, entitled “Regulatory Takings after Knick: Total Takings, the Nuisance Exception, and Background Principles Exceptions: Public Trust Doctrine, Custom, and Statutes,” he provides a summary of takings law in general and discusses in detail total takings and the exceptions which permit governments to so strictly regulate property as to permit no economically beneficial use.  Legal scholars from across the country already have commented on the importance of Mr. Callies’s work. Professor Henry Smith of Harvard Law School called it “a lucid and insightful guide through the labyrinth of the caselaw on categorical takings,” and Steven J. Eagle, of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, noted that the new book “sets forth federal and state law respecting the tension between private property rights and government regulation in a way useful to both general readers and specialists.” David Callies is a professor of law at the University of Hawaii Law School and a former recipient of the prestigious Crystal Eagle Award from Owners’ Counsel of America.