Editors' Summary: Rather than signaling the death of private property rights, as media and the public initially feared, the Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London ushered in an era of increased state and federal protection for private property. In this Article, Daniel H. Cole examines Kelo's repercussions for urban redevelopment. He begins with a description of the case, and then examines the resulting backlash from the media and public opinion, which decried the decision as unduly expanding eminent domain powers.

Editors' Summary: In this Article, William W. Wade evaluates the conceptual measurement of economic impact within the Penn Central test for income-producing properties recently adjudicated in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The discussion considers measurement of the denominator of the takings fraction related to Penn Central's parcel as a whole and whether it differs between permanent and temporary takings.

In a recent essay, David Coursen asks an important and unexamined question: Are environmental justice policies, which seek to avoid disproportionate environmental burdens on minority and poor communities, on a "collision course" with the Equal Protection Clause? In concluding that a potential collision is more illusory than real, Coursen offers a number of reasons why governmental actions to promote environmental justice have not been challenged in court and, even if they were to be, would not be subjected to strict judicial scrutiny.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

The regulatory takings jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court has become an ungainly body, awkward for citizens and judges to apply and challenging as well, one might guess, for the Court itself, as it continues to reshape the law to better serve its aims. One cause of this predicament: leading decisions have arisen from peculiar facts and messy procedural contexts, yielding rulings that are hard to apply elsewhere. Another cause: the divergent views of Court members on the deference properly due the work of land use regulators.

There has been a great deal of federal-state conflict, termed the "Seaweed Rebellion," regarding the development of outer continental shelf (OCS) oil and gas resources. The crux of the conflict is that the benefits of OCS energy development are national, while the impacts are regional. One of the main issues of contention is the distribution and control of the revenues derived from OCS energy development. Presently, most of the revenues are deposited into the U.S. Treasury and utilized to pay for federal programs and deficit reduction.

Over the past 50 years, all 50 States and over 500 municipalities have enacted laws to encourage or require the preservation of buildings and areas with historic or aesthetic importance. These nationwide legislative efforts have been precipitated by two concerns. The first is recognition that, in recent years, large numbers of historic structures, landmarks, and areas have been destroyed without adequate consideration of either the values represented therein or the possibility of preserving the destroyed properties for use in economically productive ways.

The economic success of the United States over the past century has prompted observers around the world to look to it for lessons on stimulating growth. Compared with many countries, the United States is plainly doing something right in terms of fostering the energies of its people. One cause of U.S. success has been the fertile land of central North America, and no study can overlook that unearned natural blessing. Still, American culture and its many institutions have played chief roles in the nation's cornucopia.

Protecting healthy watersheds and restoring degraded ones is one of this country's major unmet environmental challenges. Because watersheds do not respect political boundaries, effective watershed conservation will require cooperation and coordination among all levels of government, including local units. Watershed conservation is one of the increasingly significant environmental protection roles local governments are playing for a variety of reasons, ranging from choice to coercion.