Best Selling Books by Allan Wolf

In Land Use Planning and the Environment, the authors have dramatically revised and updated a classic, seminal casebook, Land-Use Planning. Designed primarily for the classroom, the book takes a comprehensive approach to the teaching of planning and zoning law, regulatory takings, and environmental topics. Throughout the casebook, the authors identify and explore intersections between land use planning law and environmental regulation. They also identify the hidden environmental "agenda" behind exclusionary zoning, the impact of urban sprawl on clean air and critical habitats, and other interconnections. Professors, students, and law and planning practitioners with strong backgrounds and exposure to "traditional" environmental law will find these intersections a wonderful opportunity to examine familiar topics from a fresh perspective. For other users, Land Use Planning and the Environment will serve as a valuable introduction to the environmental realm, a realm that, more than perhaps any other in American law, is subject to swift and dramatic changes that require the most current teaching materials.

This essay, written on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, discusses the urban settings for key regulatory takings decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, reviews the state of expert commentary before the rebirth of regulatory takings in the high court, explores the complex relationship between liberal justices and private property rights protection, reviews regulatory takings scholarship that has appeared in the pages of this journal, and closes with some thoughts about the future of urban regulatory takings.

It was inevitable that residential landlords would challenge the foreclosure moratoria featured in state and federal COVID-19 emergency orders, regulations, and legislation. At the same time, commercial landlords and tenants are wrestling in court over the question of whether the pandemic and restrictions that governments imposed in response can excuse the nonpayment of rent. While these issues will continue to appear and percolate through state and federal trial and appellate tribunals, this Article provides an interim report on the progress (or lack thereof) of constitutional (Takings and Contract Clauses) and common-law (force majeure, frustration of purpose, impossibility of performance) theories enlisted to vindicate the alleged violation of property and contract rights or to support or oppose efforts to recover full rental payments during a global crisis.Even the U.S. Supreme Court, via its “shadow docket,” has had a word in this debate, invoking the newly emergent and problematic “major questions” doctrine. The Article closes with a consideration of the roles stare decisis and respect for precedent are playing in the emerging COVID-related real property jurisprudence.

The new normal of environmental law will likely feature reduced enforcement of existing federal environmental statutes, elimination of federal regulations deemed anti-business, slashed funding for climate change response programs, and state preemption of local sustainability initiatives. Attorneys representing environmental interests will be “bringing a knife to a gunfight” should they continue to attack such stalwart principles of conservative jurisprudence as federalism, textualism, and originalism, or to seek the reversal of strong precedents that narrow standing, limit the reach of the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses, and expand the scope of the Takings Clause to include allegedly confiscatory environmental and land use regulations. What is needed is a litigation strategy that goes beyond accommodating, adjusting, or massaging conservative jurisprudence. Counsel should advance arguments that will most effectively result in victories for the side identified with environmental protection and sustainability. This article provides the framework for the adoption and advancement of conservative constitutional principles (a set of doctrines that I call “right environmentalism”), presents six illustrative scenarios, and discusses two examples from the early twentieth century of counsel successfully appealing to conservatives on the Court (Muller v. Oregon and Buchanan v. Warley), examples that can serve as models for today''s very serious challenges.

"Humbled" and "honored" are the two words that come to mind when describing my reaction to the responses of Professors Daniel Mandelker and Patty Salkin to my recent article, Zoning Reformed (70 U. Kan. L. Rev. 171 (2021)). Like so many active in the field of land use law, I have long admired their insightful and useful contributions to the literature, seemingly boundless energy, and generous openness to new ideas. This essay provides (1) background information on the origins of Zoning Reformed, (2) reactions to the Mandelker and Salkin responses, and (3) some additional thoughts about the prospects of real reform for American zoning.