Successful Nelson Symposium Held in November

Can the government force you to sell your home to make way for a factory or shopping mall?  Should a city council have the power to take land for development by private companies?  And should the courts intervene when they do?  These were some of the questions aired at the Richard E. Nelson Symposium held on November 17-18 in Gainesville.  Some one hundred practicing lawyers, law students, and law professors attended the symposium, which brought together some of the nation’s most respected scholars on property rights to take up both sides of the debate.

The conference, which was organized by Michael Allan Wolf – who holds the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law at the Levin College of Law – and co-sponsored by the ELULS and the City, County and Local Government Law Section of the Florida Bar, centered around Kelo v. New London, the recent case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities could use the power of eminent domain to take land for economic development purposes.  The symposium is sponsored by the Nelson Chair, funded through a gift from the late Richard E. Nelson and his wife Jane.

Speakers included Professor Wolf from UF, Professor James Krier from the University of Michigan, Notre Dame Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, who spoke on the political economy of just compensation, Fordham University Associate Professor Eduardo Penalver, who spoke on exactions in the wake of Lingle, Pepperdine Chair in Constitutional Law Douglas Kmiec, and Mark Fenster, Associate Professor at UF, who spoke on land use bargaining under the Court’s functional equivalence approach to taking.

Spring Speaker Series begins January 26

This spring, the Environmental and Land Use Law Program at the University of Florida’s College of Law will offer its second annual Environmental Speaker Series in conjunction with its Capstone Colloquium.  The Colloquium is an innovative course co-taught by law faculty, featuring nationally prominent scholars from around the country as guest lecturers.  All sessions will begin at 3:00 p.m.:

January 26: Christopher Bzdok, Olson, Bzdok & Howard, P.C. (Traverse City, Michigan) (topic to be announced).

February 16: John Echeverria, Executive Director, Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, Defending Takings Lawsuits.

March 2: Mark Fenster, Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, The State and Local Legislative Response to Nollan and Dolan.

March 23: Sarah Krakoff, Associate Professor, University of Colorado College of Law, Consuming Wilderness.

March 30: James R. Rasband, Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Brigham Young University Law School, Buying Back the West.

The Speaker Series is made possible by generous support of our three Gold Sponsors: the Environmental and Land Use Law Section of the Florida Bar, Hopping Green and Sams, P.A., and Lewis Longman & Walker, P.A.  Interested members of the Florida bar are invited to attend on a space-available basis. For reservations and scheduling updates, please call Professor Christine Klein (352-273-0964).
 

Twelfth Annual Public Interest Environmental Conference March 9-11

This year's Public Interest Environmental Conference – organized by the students at the law school with the support and co-sponsorship of the Public Interest Committee of the ELULS – promises to be outstanding.  The main portion of the conference will take place between Thursday March 9 and Saturday March 11, with a special kick-off presentation on Wednesday March 8 when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will speak that evening, co-sponsored by Accent.  This year's conference highlights a variety of themes including children and the environment and rhetoric and the environment, as well as panels focusing on a wide range of issues affecting Florida's ecosystems.

The theme of the conference is "In Fairness to Future Generations" and Professor Edith Brown Weiss of Georgetown – who wrote the book from which the theme is drawn – will be one of our plenary speakers.  Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder," will speak at the opening reception on Thursday March 9.  Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Underwater Explorer and former Chief Scientist for NOAA will be the keynote speaker at the banquet on Friday evening.  Among other notable speakers, former EPA Administrator Carol Browner will be speak on Saturday March 11.  As soon as the agenda is finalized, it will be available on the conference website, where you can register online at http://www.ufpiec.org