Faculty Publications

This casebook covers the entire range of land use law and related constitutional and environmental issues. The 8th edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect new caselaw as well as legislative and regulatory trends at the federal, state, and local levels. The 8th edition reflects modern land use policy goals, which include, among others, promoting sustainable development and addressing the extensive impact that land use segregation has had on the distribution of wealth in this country. Chapter One, which sets the stage for the rest of the book, includes nuisance law, restrictive covenants, with new cases on racial covenants and common interest communities, and the development and legal underpinnings of legislative zoning and comprehensive planning. Chapter Two covers the basics of zoning and the classic approach to zoning changes, flexible modern techniques, such as conditional zoning, floating zones, and planned unit developments, the process through which zoning changes are made, and the complexities of non-conforming uses, vested rights, and development agreements. Chapter Three examines federal constitutional issues in land use law, including challenges arising under the Takings Clause, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, and the First Amendment. This Chapter includes the Supreme Court's decision in Knick v. Township of Scott and reflects the major jurisdictional impacts on ripeness, finality, and the exhaustion of remedies. Chapter Four offers concise coverage of subdivision regulation and infrastructure financing. Chapter Five focuses on housing and has been updated to reflect approaches to homelessness and its impact on local communities. Chapter Six explores strategies to revitalize the urban core, including the controversial use of eminent domain to clear land for redevelopment, as well as tax incentives, business improvement districts, public-private partnerships, land banking, and flexible housing codes. Chapter Seven examines growth management strategies, including land use moratoria and population caps that limit growth, as well as policies designed to prevent sprawl and preserve agricultural lands. Chapter Eight, which has been combined with Chapter Nine from the prior edition, addresses the impact of land use regulation on environmental resilience and sustainability and the move towards sustainable development.

In the 1960’s, the Supreme Court famously imposed the one person, one vote requirement on federal, state and local legislatures. The doctrine triggered a reapportionment revolution that rapidly resolved the problem of malapportioned districts. Within just a few years, legislatures across the nation were reapportioned to equalize the population between districts. Sadly, however, the national commitment to equal-population districts has led directly to the current crisis of political gerrymandering. The boundaries of equal-population districts must be redrawn every ten years to maintain population equality. Even with rigid adherence to population requirements, district boundaries are easily manipulated to secure incumbent seats and advance partisan interests. Redistricting is rightly condemned for allowing politicians to pick their voters, rather than the other way around. At the local level, however, one group of municipalities avoids redistricting by incorporating weighted voting into their apportionment plans. While scholars have studied other variations in municipal apportionment, they have failed to examine the nuances of weighted voting apportionment plans. This Article begins to fill that void, demonstrating that weighted voting dramatically increases the options for legislative apportionment and arguing that weighted voting could serve as a model for the next reapportionment revolution. As this Article explains, weighted voting eliminates the need for strict population equality. It can be used alone to preserve representation for whole political units, such as towns on the county board. It can also be incorporated into multimember districts, equal-population districts, or both, to equalize the mathematic weight of each vote across unequal population districts. Weighted voting thus enables the formation of districts that reflect priorities other than population equality, including districts that correspond to political subdivisions and prevent gerrymandering.

This Article argues that weighted voting should be used to comply with the constitutional one-person, one-vote requirement while preserving representation for political units on the legislative body. First, this Article demonstrates that weighted voting satisfies the quantitative one-person, one-vote requirement by equalizing the mathematic weight of each vote. Second, this Article demonstrates that weighted voting has the potential to remedy several negative consequences of equal-population districts. Specifically, this Article argues that by preserving local political boundaries, weighted voting eliminates the decennial redistricting process that gives rise to claims of partisan gerrymandering, enables local governments to function both as administrative arms of the state and as independent political communities and provides a format for regional governance. Third, this Article recognizes that while weighted-voting equalizes the mathematic weight of each vote, it does not equalize all aspects of legislative representation. In particular, this Article explains that weighted-voting generates inequality in the functional representation each voter receives, inflates the political power and voting power of legislators from more populous districts, and increases the risk of minority vote dilution. Though the Supreme Court has never addressed the constitutionality of weighted voting, this Article argues that weighted voting does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Thus, this Article concludes that while it is important to recognize the tradeoffs inherent in weighted-voting apportionment plans, these tradeoffs do not preclude their use.