We are back in the saddle after a week or so in Hawaii, which is a soujourn we recommend to restore one’s sense of tranquility. The Good Lord sure outdid himself when He created that place. It also didn’t hurt that during our stay there we got to lecture at the University of Hawaii Law School, and to join in the celebration of the 85th birthday of the matriarch of a local clan — a series of luaus extending over a period of three days. Wow! Those folks sure know how to celebrate.
Anyway, now that we are properly relaxed and refreshed, it’s time to continue delivering on our earlier promise to tell the stories, the real stories, of various past eminent domain and inverse condemnation cases that often turned out to be quite different from what the readers of court opinions may have been led to believe. Next in line is Agins v. City of Tiburon, an intellectual disaster of unparallelled proportions. You don’t have to take our word for it. Every single court that decided any facet of that controversy was held to be dead wrong and was eventually overruled, including the U.S. Supreme Court which in the end overruled itself and expressly disapproved its own opinion in that case.
So stay tuned.