|
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 | ||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
||
 What's New? | Faculty in the News | News Archive | News Home
|
|
||
|
|||
|
|
Junior Faculty Forum His “Existing Uses” Article Selected September 9, 2008 -- Professor Christopher Serkin’s latest article, “Existing Uses: Retroactive Land Use Regulations and the Takings Clause,” was accepted by the prestigious Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, held in June at the Yale Law School. Serkin follows in the footsteps of BLS Professors Dana Brakman Reiser and Edward Janger, who have both presented at the forum. This year’s forum marked the series’ ninth session. Its objective was to encourage the work of young scholars by providing experience in the pursuit of scholarship and the nature of the scholarly exchange. A jury of accomplished scholars from many law schools with expertise in the topics selected for the year choose 12 to 14 papers on a blind basis from the many who submit. To be eligible, a scholar must have been teaching for one to seven years and cannot have published the piece yet. One or more senior scholars, not necessarily from Stanford or Yale, comments on each paper, and the selected authors present their papers to an audience that includes the invited young scholars, faculty from the host institutions, and invited guests. The topics of this year’s papers cover public law and the humanities. Serkin’s piece addressed the ways in which property law provides special protections for existing uses of land, as opposed to prospective uses that have yet to be built. Serkin was interested in why and how the law privileges existing use. “There is an assumption in many property law doctrines that the government cannot eliminate a private property owner’s existing use of his land without compensating him or her,” he explained. But neither the Takings nor the Due Process Clauses of the Constitution appear to require compensation for existing uses, and no obvious normative justifications exist that compel this special protection. “To my knowledge, no court or commentator has addressed the issue of where this assumption comes from,” said Serkin. “I argue that the only salient differences between existing and future uses are the result of psychological ‘endowment effects’ and the political economy of existing uses.” The “endowment effect” means that because people value things they possess more than things they do not yet have, the regulation of an existing use imposes some added harm. And by “political economy,” Serkin refers to the idea that while existing uses enjoy predictable political advantages at the state and federal level, they are particularly susceptible to regulation by local governments that may single out existing uses for regulatory burdens. “If these are the only reasons for protecting existing uses, they justify far less protection than the law currently affords,” he said. “My article ultimately concludes that existing uses should not be entitled to any special protection but instead should be subject to the same takings and due process analysis that applies to all regulations and government actions.”
|
|
