Monthly Archives: May 2017

Entertaining New Article

If you are into inverse condemnation in general and inverse condemnation as applied to airport operators in particular, we recommend a new article by Michael Berger who is the foremost inverse condemnation litigator, and who was heard from in every modern airport case heard by the California Supreme Court in recent decades, and in a half-dozen or so non-airport inverse taking cases considered on the merits by the US Supreme Court.

The article is semi-autobiographical, which gives Berger’s writing a nice personal touch — none of the usual opaque professorial babblings in this one. It’s both informative and entertaining. Go to http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1969&context=law_journal_law_policy

If you are still using paper, it’s Michael M. Berger, The Joy of Takings, 53 Wash. U. Jour. of Law & Policy 89 (2017)

 

Lebensraum for Muslim Refugees in Germany

A dispatch from Germany has reached us, indicating that the city of Hamburg is expropriating apartments, taking them from their German owners to provide housing for Middle Eastern Muslim refugees who have been pouring into Germany at the rate of hundreds per day, with the blessings of the German government. The apartments will be renovated upon taking, but — get this — the cost of renovation will be charged to current apartment owners. This dispatch is silent on whether anyone — notably the refugees — will be paying any rent to the condemnee-owners. See Soeren Kern, Germany Confiscationg Houses to Use for Migrants, Gatestone Institute, May 15, 2017. See https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15c071f6459bb092

This bit of Enteignung is complicated by the fact that the apartments in question have been sitting vacant, with no indication as to why their owners were not using or renting them. Also, the German constitution provides for the exercise of eminent domain for public benefit and upon payment of just compensation. So chances are we will hear about this bit of German kleptocracy.

We’re Back!

As you can see, after a couple of weeks of cyber-misadventures, that inexplicably substituted some other completely unrelated blog for Gideonstrumpet.info, we are back on line.

All appears to be well now. Stand by.