What Owners Want and Governments Do - Evidence from the Oregon Experiment
In 2004, Oregonians approved ballot Measure 37 by 61% to 39%. The measure answered the calls of critics of contemporary takings jurisprudence by requiring either compensation for losses caused by land use restrictions imposed after acquisition of the property or waivers of the restrictions. Three years later, voters acted to repeal most of Measure 37 by an even greater margin. Together the birth, brief life, and rapid demise of Measure 37 comprise an unusual natural experiment in property law. The results of this experiment go to the heart of debates about regulatory takings in property law and policy. First, the Oregon experience resulted in a sea change in owners’ understandings of property rights. The 2004 vote reflected the popular understanding of land use restrictions as invasions of property rights. Faced with effective repeal of those restrictions, as reflected in passionate testimony before the Oregon legislature, Oregonians came to see the regulations as in fact an important source of property rights. In effect Measure 37 brought the background government and community support on which property rights depend into the foreground of owners’ consciousness. Second, government responses to Measure 37 challenged arguments that compensation will dispel the fiscal illusion under which governments operate and result in more efficient regulation. Rather than weigh costs and benefits, in all but one of thousands of cases, the government waived the regulations rather than compensate. These decisions were made without analysis of the benefits of the regulations waived, and despite predictably negative results. Finally, the thousands of claims and research catalyzed by these claims complicated questions of the compensation to which owners are justly entitled. While limited, therefore, the Oregon experiment provided valuable grounded evidence for the continuing debate about takings law and the ways that property mediates the relationships between individuals, communities, and the state.
Lucas's Unlikely Legacy: The Rise of Background Principles as Categorical Takings Defenses
Advocates for expanded property rights heralded the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission as the dawn of a new era in which landowners would obtain increased constitutional compensation for the burdens of regulation, and which in turn would discourage regulatory initiatives. The post-Lucas era has been a considerable disappointment to property rights advocates, however. Ensuing decisions have confined the categorical takings rule to regulations that result in complete economic wipeouts, a rare phenomenon. On the other hand, courts have expansively interpreted the decision's exemption from compensation for regulations that merely forbid uses prohibited by background principles of property and nuisance law. In fact, a dozen or more categorical defenses have evolved under the Lucas decision's background principles inquiry. Thus, surprisingly enough, Lucas's chief effect has been to make the nature of the claimant's property interest a threshold issue in all takings cases. Instead of increasing the likelihood of either landowner compensation or deregulation, Lucas's principal legacy lies in affording government defendants numerous effective categorical defenses with which to defeat takings claims.
Research on Control and Planning of Soft-Wing UAV for Haze Removal
The existence of fog and haze has caused great pollution to the environment. The research of removing haze is a hot topic in recent years. In this paper, a special haze removal algorithm based on Soft- Wing UAVis proposed. In this algorithm, two track control strategies are designed based on the Soft-Wing UAV model transfer function. A SIMULINK platform based mathematical model of Soft-Wing UAV is built to testified effectiveness of the two track control strategies. An autonomous ergodic-planning algorithm with greedy strategy and foldback algorithm for Soft-Wing UAV is designed. Within the algorithm, the haze regional has been modelled, the cost matrix is constructed, and the planning and ergodic strategy is proposed. Finally, the experimental results validates the reliability of the algorithm in the application of haze removal with the proposed evaluation Index.