Show Notes
On this episode we return to the subject of zoning. With the doors to federal courthouses barred shut, advocates for reforming zoning have turned to state courts and state constitutions. Most famously, in 1975, the New Jersey Supreme Court took a look at a zoning ordinance that made it illegal to build low- and moderate-income housing in the township of Mount Laurel and said in no uncertain terms: enough. But the story of the Mount Laurel doctrine, which calls for municipalities to do their fair share to meet the regional demand for affordable housing, is not all milk and honey. Additionally, we take a look at some current efforts in other states to protect property rights under state constitutions.
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Mount Laurel I (1975) and Mount Laurel II (1983)
Warth v. Seldin
Belle Terre v. Boraas
More from Bound By Oath by IJ
In 1966, Los Angeles officials tried to put a man in prison for handing out leaflets in protest of a fatal police shooting. Today, we know the case as Younger v. Harris, which kicked off the doctrine of Younger abstention, the bane of many a civil rights plaintiff. On this episode, we examine the origins, the impact, and the relentless expansion of the doctrine.
On this episode, we recover a lost part of the Fourth Amendment that the Supreme Court essentially erased in 1960. In the case of Jones v. United States, the Court ignored text, history, and tradition, and disfigured the Warrant Clause, allowing law enforcement to knock down doors based on mere hearsay and with scant consequences for lying or mistakes. Jones was wrong the day it was decided, and the Court should overturn it.
On this episode: the story of Pullman abstention, the first of several abstention doctrines the Supreme Court invented to let federal judges decline to decide cases that they have jurisdiction to decide.
Next week, the Supreme Court is going to hear a huge civil rights case that no one is talking about—because the legal issue before the Court is the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, an obscure and slightly treasonous doctrine that lets federal judges throw worthy cases out of court without reaching the merits.
In our final episode of the season, we head to Indian Country and survey several strands of Supreme Court precedent that prevent Native Americans from putting their property to peaceful and productive use.