Articles

Two cases in the news this week made me wonder if I read the Fifth Amendment differently than the rest of the country. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” There are any number of interesting questions raised by that language, but I want … ...

Sometimes I fall into the trap of believing that teachers’ unions think they have the best interests of the children when they oppose school choice initiatives, but then I remember that such a belief is a fairy tale.  Teachers’ unions, like other unions, exist to protect the interests of their members: teachers. Their own websites  ...

Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) today petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take review of a case that asks whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” applies to private property. The question may seem obvi ...

Pacific Legal Foundation often takes on cases where private property owners face unconstitutional action by the federal government. But another dispute recently caught PLF’s eye, and this battle involves a local government taking on the feds. In a nutshell, the Michigan upper-peninsula government of Marquette County wishes to build a count ...

The news this morning brought word that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of Captain John Yates of the Miss Katie in his eight-year battle with the federal government about some undersized fish he caught. Pacific Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief supporting Captain Yates, and find much to like about the … ...

Earlier today, the San Francisco Daily Journal published Pacific Legal Foundation’s op-ed on the Yates v. United States decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States this week.  In the piece, we laud the Supreme Court’s important—and correct—decision. The op-ed expands on the point PLF made in its amicus brief on ...

The shoreline of the Great Lakes has given rise to many interesting property rights disputes between property owners and hungry governments looking to take private property without obeying the Constitution. Add the case of LBLHA, LLC, v. Town of Long Beach, Indiana, to that list. The states bordering the Great Lakes have a history of trying to ...

A tragedy on a youth ball field nearly seven years ago drove the Florida Supreme Court to change Florida law today. The Court held that the family of a former high school student who suffered ventricular fibrillation during a soccer game on a school field can sue the school district for failure to use an automated external defibrillator … ...

  PLF went racing in the streets this week up to the swamps of Jersey to file an amicus brief in an arbitration case pending at the New Jersey Supreme Court. In Morgan v. Sanford Brown, we argue that the Court should uphold a lower court decision to enforce an arbitration agreement and send the parties to arbitration. PLF has reason to ...