Property Posts
January 2024 Council Meeting Updates
At its meeting on January 18 and 19, 2024, the ALI Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts of the following projects and approved drafts and portions of drafts as listed.
Court split over California man’s takings clause dispute
Justices appeared divided at oral argument in a California man’s challenge to the constitutionality of the “traffic impact mitigation” fee that he was required to pay when building his home.
The Institute in the Courts: The American Law Institute and State Courts
State courts across the country continue to be guided by the work of The American Law Institute. During the 2022-2023 fiscal year, courts in 49 states and the District of Columbia cited the Restatements of the Law and Principles of the Law over 1000 times.
Sacred Easements
This Article proposes a new approach, rooted in property law, for Native American faith communities to protect their sacred sites.
The Capitalization of Incomplete Property Rights to the Groundwater Commons
Incomplete property rights are common across a range of natural resources such as fisheries and groundwater. This paper takes a hedonic approach to understanding how three core features of prior appropriation water rights in Kansas—access, allocation, and seniority—confer value to irrigated farmland.
October 2023 Council Meeting Updates
At its meeting on October 19 and 20, 2023, the Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts of the following projects and approved drafts and portions of drafts as listed.
Toward a Tribal Role in Groundwater Management
This Article considers the Agua Caliente groundwater litigation a decade since its inception and outlines the present opportunity to reimagine the role of tribes in groundwater management.
Section 8 vouchers take center stage in dispute between landlord and disabled tenant
Federal law bars housing discrimination against a person with a disability. Under the Fair Housing Act, landlords and sellers must provide “reasonable accommodations” to give someone with a disability “equal opportunity” to rent or buy a home. These cases examine whether the FHA requires landlords to accept so-called Section 8 vouchers from tenants who are too disabled to work.
U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, Both Decided May 25, 2023, Protect Private Property Owners from Overreach by Local (Tax Sale) and Federal (Wetlands) Regulators: Tyler v. Hennepin County and Sackett v. EPA
This piece analyzes two U.S. Supreme Court rulings that expand the constitutional protections afforded private property owners in two regulatory contexts—tax sales administered by local governments and the EPA’s classification of wetlands as “waters under the United States” under the Clean Water Act.
Property and Sovereignty in America: A History of Title Registries & Jurisdictional Power
This Article tells an untold history of the American title registry—a colonial bureaucratic innovation that, though overlooked and understudied, constitutes one of the most fundamental elements of the U.S. property system today.