Articles

The San Francisco Examiner has this editorial about the Bayview/Hunter's Point lawsuit. Excerpt: We’re not excited about subjecting the fate of private property to an election, but neither do we like it when developers team with politicians to run roughshod over property rights. It appears The City should offer more assurances and rule ou ...

by Timothy Sandefur Not all cases of government seizing property involve real estate. In Evans v. United States, the government is taking raisins from farmers—up to a quarter of the entire crop!—in order to ensure that raisins don't get any cheaper. That's right: the government has a program to ensure that you don't get cheap ̷ ...

by Steven Geoffrey Gieseler The New Year looks a lot like the old one in Riviera Beach, Florida, with formal allegations of financial improprieties that violate Florida law.  Specifically, an audit conducted by the State of Florida found that the city's Community Redevelopment Agency–the entity in charge of Riviera Beach's illeg ...

by Steven Geoffrey Gieseler This weekend's round of the NFL playoffs will feature a game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts, played in Baltimore.  Part of what makes this matchup interesting is that the Colts resided in Baltimore for the first thirty years of their existence, skipping town in 1984, infamously, under c ...

Here's an interesting piece by a political science professor at the University of Delhi, taking issue with the use of eminent domain in India. … ...

Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy points to this editorial that he and Richard Epstein have published about the scandalous Didden v. Port Chester case that is now awaiting the Supreme Court's attention. … ...

The Real Estate Bloggers points to this story about the Valsamaki case in Maryland, and comments, "Can you create a greater climate for graft and corruption? Boss Tweed would be proud. Trying to justify this makes the settlers actions to the Indians look ethical." Here's the Pacific Legal Foundation's brief in the Valsamaki case. ...

by Timothy Sandefur Bill Virgin of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has this article on eminent domain reform in Washington. Unfortunately, the news doesn't sound very good: Last week Attorney General Rob McKenna announced plans for a task force to review the state's eminent-domain laws, with a report due in time for the 2008 legislative sess ...

by Timothy Sandefur Bill Maurer of the Institute for Justice and the Washington Policy Center has published this important paper on eminent domain abuse in Washington State. … ...