Categories: Real Estate, Land Use, and Community Law
Instructor(s) Mitchell, Thomas
This Land Use course employs an analytical framework that focuses on institutional choice and comparative institutional analysis– the central issue of who decides. The term “institutional” reflects the reality that the decision of who decides is really a decision of what decides. The alternative decision-makers are complex processes, such as the political process, the market, and the courts, in which the interaction of many participants shape performance. This analytical framework provides the tools to look at the full range of land use issues including common law nuisance, private land use planning, subdivision regulation, zoning, and urban redevelopment. Land use law has aspects of torts, contracts and constitutional law and these aspects can be tied together using comparative institutional analysis. The materials for this course will be cases and exercises and a book on comparative institutional analysis of land use law called “Law’s Limits.”
