"Stopping the government's property grab" or "Little pink houses for you and me"

Roger Pilon writes in the LATimes on ballot initiatives designed to respond to Kelo. His article begins:

NEXT MONTH, in 12 states, including California, voters will get a rare chance to talk back to the Supreme Court. Those are the states with measures on their ballots to protect property rights, sparked by the court's 2005 Kelo decision, which lets government condemn a person's property and give it to someone else who can make "better use" of it. In an instant, Americans across the country woke up to the realization that, as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in dissent, "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property."

To date, 30 states have enacted measures to restrain their power to condemn, and citizens have stepped in where legislatures have balked, placing initiatives on the ballots. Despite intense opposition from the powers who benefit from the status quo, these initiatives are doing well in the polls because they're tapping into a bedrock American principle: the right of everyone to own and enjoy property.

Here is a link to the article. And above left is a picture of Susette Kelo's Pink house (John Mellencamp call your office).

New 4th Circuit Finders Case

Over at the PropertyProf blog, yours truly has a post about an interesting and recent finders case.

"Ballot measures propose limits on judicial authority"

The Washington Times has an interesting article today that begins:

Western conservatives are gunning for the judiciary this election year with a half-dozen ballot measures that would rope in the authority of what they describe as activist judges.

Case in point is Colorado, where former state Senate leader John Andrews tried for years to solve the problem of activist judges who he said routinely legislated from the bench, often at the expense of conservatives.

His efforts in the legislature fell short, but Mr. Andrews isn't finished. He is the prime mover behind Amendment 40, a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit state appellate judges to 10-year terms, making Colorado the first state to limit the office of top-tier judges.

"We see a pattern of ideological and political decisions from the bench, and it points to a consistent tendency of appellate judges in Colorado to rewrite the law," said Mr. Andrews, now a fellow with the Claremont Institute, after a press conference yesterday at the state Capitol.

Although you will hear angry screams that these initiatives threaten "judicial independence," another view is that they are a reasonable check on judges who often go beyond the judicial task of interpreting the law and begin to rule from the bench. This is a movement worth keeping an eye on.

Law & Literature

Over at Concurring Opinions, Daniel Solove has a post about law & literature. Here is a key excerpt:

If you're interested in law and literature, you might find my website for the Law & Humanities Institute to contain some useful information.
There are several web pages that may be of interest:
1. General Resources (websites, syllabi, etc.)
2. A List of Literary Works About the Law
3. A Chronological Bibliography of Works About Law & Literature (1982-present)
4. A Bibliography of Law & Literature Scholarship About Particular Writers

Handouts 7, 7A & 7B

These 3 handouts--all on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 ("RLUIPA")--are now available in the handout kiosk near my secretary's suite on the south side of the library.

We will not be covering this topic for awhile, but the handouts are available for you to pick up. Please take only one copy per student.