Federal District Judge Charles Breyer recently dismissed a lawsuit by mortgage lenders challenging the constitutionality of the City of Richmond’s plan to condemn over 600 underwater mortgages, while paying compensation far below market level. Judge Breyer dismissed the case on procedural grounds, because it is not yet “ripe” due to the fact that the city […]
Archive | Just Compensation Clause
My USA Today Column on the City of Richmond’s Plan to Condemn Mortgages
By Ilya Somin on August 12, 2013 5:12 pm in Eminent Domain, Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights
The USA Today website just published my column criticizing the Richmond, CA’s plan to condemn mortgages: The City of Richmond, California is threatening to use eminent domain to condemn over 600 mortgages on homes that are now worth less than the outstanding debt on the mortgages themselves. The city plans to write down the value […]
Will the City of Richmond’s Plan to Condemn Mortgages Really Cost Taxpayers Nothing?
By Ilya Somin on August 9, 2013 8:34 pm in Eminent Domain, Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights
In an earlier post, I noted that one of the problems with the California City of Richmond’s plan to use eminent domain to condemn mortgages is that taxpayers will have to pay for it. However, some defenders of the plan – such as Mortgage Resolution Partners – the “community advisory” firm that has been hired […]
Lawsuit Challenges Richmond, CA’s Plan to Use Eminent Domain to Condemn Mortgages
By Ilya Somin on August 7, 2013 11:10 pm in Eminent Domain, Just Compensation Clause, Kelo, Property Rights
A group of bond investors has filed a lawsuit challenging the California City of Richmond’s plan to use eminent domain to condemn mortgages: Bond investors including Pacific Investment Management Co. and BlackRock Inc. (BLK) are seeking a court order blocking Richmond, California, and Mortgage Resolution Partners LLC from seizing mortgages through eminent domain, saying the […]
Just Compensation Problems with the City of Richmond’s Plan to Use Eminent Domain to Condemn Mortgages
In my previous post on the the California city of of Richmond’s plan to use eminent domain to condemn underwater mortgages, I noted that the plan is likely to be permissible under the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which says that a taking is for a constitutional “public use,” so […]
A Modest But Potentially Significant Supreme Court Victory for Property Rights
By Ilya Somin on June 10, 2013 7:50 pm in Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights, Regulatory Takings
To the disappointment of court-watchers, the Supreme Court did not announce any high-profile decisions today. But it did issue a unanimous opinion in Horne v. Department of Agriculture, a notable Takings Clause property rights case. The Hornes are California raisin farmers seeking to challenge the constitutionality of a provision of the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act […]
Yun-chien Chang on Takings Compensation
How much should the government pay to compensate property owners whose land it has condemned? Legal scholars, jurists, and economists have been debating this issue for centuries. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fifth Amendment’s value requirement of “just compensation” as requiring “fair market value” compensation – roughly the amount of money that the property […]
The Takings Clause and Government Destruction of Homeless Persons’ Property
Co-blogger Orin Kerr comments on the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision holding that a Los Angeles policy allowing the seizure of briefly unattended property belonging to the homeless violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable” seizures. It’s worth noting that the policy also violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires government to pay […]
Ensuring “Just Compensation” for Takings of Property with Valuable Potential Future Uses
Famed property scholar Richard Epstein recently wrote an interesting post on an important Just Compensation Clause case that the Supreme Court is now considering whether to take: [W]hen government [condemns private property] … it must pay just compensation to the landowner for the value of the property taken. That guarantee will, however, surely be eviscerated […]
A Takings Claim Even Environmentalists Could Love
By Jonathan H. Adler on March 30, 2012 12:58 am in Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights, Supreme Court
Among the cases up for consideration at the Supreme Court’s conference on Friday is Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, which seeks review of an interesting takings case out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In short, the case concerns whether the temporary flooding of property can constitute a […]
Takings Issues in the AIG Bailout Litigation
Starr International, a firm headed by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, has recently sued the federal government, claiming that some provisions of the 2008 AIG bailout violated AIG shareholders’ constitutional rights (Starr was a major AIG shareholder at the time of the bailout). One of the claims Starr has advanced is that the takeover violated […]
Duke Symposium on Judicial Takings
This Friday, I will be speaking at a symposium on judicial takings at Duke Law School, sponsored by the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy. The symposium is open to both students and the public, and the schedule is available here. Among the other participants are leading property and constitutional law scholars such […]
So Why Not Roe?
By David Bernstein on June 17, 2010 1:50 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights, Rehabilitating Lochner
In today’s Stop the Beach opinion, Justice Scalia (joined by the other three conservatives) criticizes Justice Kennedy for arguing that what Scalia consider “judicial takings” should instead be handled as violation of the Due Process Clause: The second problem is that we have held for many years (logically or not) that the “liberties” protected by […]
An Important Case on Compensation for Takings
In recent years, the Supreme Court has addressed many cases on property rights issues. But it has done very little with the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires that owners be compensated when their property is condemned by the government. The longstanding rule has been that owners deserve “fair market value” compensation. […]