For years, Edward Poitevent and his family were forced to fight for their land. But now, the Pointevant's are winners in their long-running national battle over property rights and the reach of the Endangered Species Act. Edward's case, Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was the infamous "phantom frog" case. It centered around the f ...
Forty years ago, in Penn Central Transp. Co. v. City of New York (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court explained that regulatory takings cases are "essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries" wherein courts are instructed to consider a number of case specific factors, including "the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant;" "the extent to which the ...
Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Timbs v. Indiana, a case brought by our friends at Institute for Justice. In Timbs, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the states. In other words, the court will decide whether the Eighth Amendment prevents states (and not just ...
Rose Knick thought the pinnacle of her case would be on October 3, 2018, when eight Supreme Court justices spent an hour hearing legal arguments arising from her attempt to hold Scott Township accountable for taking her property without paying for it. But now Rose will do something few people who make it to the Supreme Court do: she will be returni ...
By any measure, Hurricane Katrina was a disastrous natural catastrophe. But for many landowners in St. Bernard Parish, what might have been a damaging but survivable storm was transformed into total devastation by a series of government actions and omissions stretching back decades. Last week, we filed this amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to ...
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee began its confirmation hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. And while most would rightly expect it to be excessively partisan, the first hour was a food fight. Chairman Grassley could not get through two sentences of his prepared opening remarks before nearly every Democrat member ...
caption id="attachment_59765" align="alignright" width="227" The Johnson Family (Photo by Jordan Clancy, as printed in Floridian View Magazine)/caption This week, our friends at the Cato Institute and NFIB Small Business Legal Center filed an excellent friend-of-the-court-brief supporting our clients in Pacetta, LLC v. Town of Ponce Inlet. The ...
The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment promises that the government will not take private property unless it is for a valid public use and the owner is fully compensated. And yet, we all know that Kelo v. City of New London, Conn. (2005) allowed a Connecticut city to condemn a middle class neighborhood for private redevelopment in the name of "e ...
It seems that some governments and courts prefer to treat Supreme Court precedent as an option, rather than a requirement. The Supreme Court has ruled—twice—that it's unconstitutional for government to charge permitting fees when the fees have nothing to do with the reason for the permit. Yet some courts continue to ignore the Constitution. Perhap ...