William & Mary College School of Law will hold this year’s ceremony for the Brigham-Kanner award in Beijing, with the co-sponsorship of Tsinghua University. This year’s recipient of the award will be retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who gave us that lovely dissent in Kelo v. City of New London.
The Brigham-Kanner prize was established in 2004. It is awarded annually by William & Mary College School of Law to a person who has made outstanding lifetime contributions to the subject of property rights. It is named after Toby Prince Brigham, a distinguished, second-generation Florida eminent domain lawyer, and Gideon Kanner, your faithful servant and the boniface of this blog, who is professor of law emeritus at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and is of counsel to Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles. He has spent over 40 years practicing, teaching, and commenting on the law and practice of eminent domain. He holds the ALI-ABA Harrison Tweed Award for outstanding merit in continuing legal education, and the Shattuck Prize awarded by the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers (now the Appraisal Institute) for outstanding contribution to appraisal literature, in the form of his 1973 Notre Dame Law Review article entitled Condemnation Blight: Just How Just Is Just Compensation?
Earlier recipients of the Brigham-Kanner prize have been professors Frank I. Michelman (Harvard), Richard A. Epstein (University of Chicago), James W. Ely, Jr. (Vanderbilt), Margaret Jane Radin (University of Michigan), Robert C. Ellickson (Yale), Richard E. Pipes (Harvard), and Carol M. Rose (University of Arizona). One of these days, the Lord willin’ and if the creeks don’t rise, the B-K prize may go to a practicing eminent domain lawyer, one of those unsung trench-troopers of the profession, who on a daily basis fight the good fight to defend and protect your property rights against government overreaching.
We plan to be there, naturally, to take in the festivities and the atmosphere, and to partake of some really world-class Chinese food. Hope you join us.