Can the government retake just compensation that it was required to pay a property owner for a taking of private property if the property owner doesn’t use the compensation fast enough? Can a mere statute amend the California Constitution? The obvious answer to these questions is no. Yet, it is precisely these questions that are… Read more »
In most states you can’t bring a law suit to challenge the constitutionality of a law until the law has affected you personally (e.g. you have been arrested, fined. etc.). As a result, numerous laws that many believe are unconstitutional can remain on the books for decades until someone is unlucky enough to fall… Read more »
Two weeks ago several US congressmen put forward a bill to implement a modified version of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The bill is an explicit response to last year’s supreme court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. Given the controversy and… Read more »
For years local redevelopment agencies were the bane of private property rights in California. Until recently these agencies were clothed with the power to seize private homes through eminent domain and then give that property to private developers like Costco or Wal-Mart, all in the name of community development. That changed in 2011 when the… Read more »
The Ninth Circuit will soon have the opportunity to decide whether occupational licensing applicants must submit to all licensing procedures and be denied a license before they can challenge the constitutionality of those procedures in court. The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. Maurice Underwood wants to run a moving truck company in… Read more »
Under the “Rails to Trails” program, the Federal government has begun converting abandoned railroad tracks into hiking and biking trails for the public. While this may seem like a noble endeavor, there is one major problem: the land the trails run through doesn’t belong to the federal government. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century when… Read more »
