Special Assignment--Nebraska Landlord Tenant Handout

On Friday, August 14, Prof. Kevin Ruser will be a guest in our class. He will be covering landlord-tenant issues in Nebraska, with a special emphasis on residential landlord-tenant cases.

Your assignment for this class is to read Prof. Ruser's handout on "Nebraska Landlord and Tenant Law," which is available just outside the faculty offices on the South side of the second floor. Please pick up one copy (and only one copy) and read through the handout (with special emphasis on pages 1-30) for class on August 14.

I think this will be a very interesting class.

"The Green Costs of Kelo"

Ilya Somin has an interesting post today over at the Volokh Conspiracy blog. Here is a key excerpt:

Barrels of ink have already been spilled over the Supreme Court's narrow 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, including some by yours truly. In "The Green Costs of Kelo: Economic Development Takings and Environmental Protection," environmental law professor Jonathan Adler and I have now put together the first article to systematically examine Kelo's implications for environmental policy. It is available here, and currently under review by journals.

We argue that the Supreme Court's decision to allow government to condemn property for transfer to other private parties in order to promote "economic development" may well harm the environment. In particular, private conservation land (an increasingly important tool for protecting environmental amenities and wildlife) is likely to be targeted for condemnation by developers and their allies in local government because conservation property contributes little to development and is usually not subject to property taxes. Allowing economic development condemnations also harms the environment in several indirect ways that we detail in the paper.

Some environmentalists fear that forbidding economic development takings would undermine the use of eminent domain for environmental purposes. Jonathan and I show that these fears are probably groundless. Not even the hint of such a trend has arisen in the nine states where economic development condemnations are banned by state constitutional law. And nearly all environmental takings can easily be justified under one of several legal rationales that would remain intact even if economic development takings are banned.

Like churches, conservation property does not generate lots of tax revenue and economic development for local government growth. Thus, like churches, conservation property may be particularly vulnerable to Kelo-style economic development takings. Interesting post.