Bullettin n. 1/2011
June 2011
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Webb Brantley
    How To Review State Court Determinations of State Law Antecedent to Federal Rights
    in Yale Law Journal (The) , Vol. 120, n. 5, March ,  2011 ,  1192-1250
    In Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 130 S. Ct. 2592 (2010), a plurality of the Supreme Court endorsed a judicial takings doctrine for the purpose of policing wayward state property law decisions. The plurality’s opinion culminates several decades’ worth of effort by legal scholars and property law groups to secure closer federal review of state court property law determinations antecedent to federal takings claims. In a great victory for these groups, but in an opinion that also cuts against more than a century of Supreme Court deference to state courts in this area, the plurality adopted a new standard of independent review for antecedent state property law determinations. This Note examines the tradition of deference cast aside by the plurality’s opinion and makes a case for its rehabilitation. Important purposes are served by Supreme Court deference to state court determinations of antecedent state law; not least of these is the check that deference places on the Supreme Court’s own power over state court decisionmaking. This Note concludes that the damaging consequences of independent review ultimately outweigh any benefits that may accrue to property owners; it urges the Court to return to a deferential standard of review and leave state courts free to develop distinctive bodies of property law responsive to their states’ local needs and histories.
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