Constitutional Law

Timothy S. Bishop and Cristina C. Tilley, litigators in the Chicago office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, offered up a Dialogue in the July 2002, issue of the Environmental Law Reporter News…

In the west Chicago suburb of Sugar Grove—population 4,000, twice what it was 10 years ago—new large-lot developments spread spider-like from the downtown public library, police station, and…

Is an intentional temporary deprivation of the use of land not a "temporary taking"? This proposition was asserted by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Tahoe-Sierra…

Smart Growth admits of no clear definition. It provides a popular label for a growth strategy that addresses current concerns about traffic congestion, disappearing open space, nonpoint source…

On June 29, 2001, the last day of the October 2000 term, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider "whether the [Ninth Circuit] Court of Appeals properly determined that a temporary…

Improperly planned urban development has resulted in catastrophic sprawl. The present land use zeitgeist hails urban and suburban mixed-use zoning as the solution. Mixed-use zoning…

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…

In the span of just a few years, the U.S. Supreme Court has brought the venerable constitutional concept of federalism back to life with a vengeance. In the 1999 Term alone, the Rehnquist Court…

To the extent the city argues that, as a matter of law, its landuse decisions are immune from judicial scrutiny under all circumstances, its position is contrary to settled regulatory takings…

In Environmental Federalism Part 1: The History of Overfiling Under RCRA, the CWA, and the CAA Prior to Harmon, Smithfield, and CLEAN, the history of judicial and administrative…