Sincere apologies for destroying your house is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Until now, these “Damagings Clauses” have largely been ignored by legal scholars, particularly constitutional law scholars—and even by property rights advocates. But an outstanding 2018 article by Professor Maureen “Molly” Brady (who has just moved from the University of Virginia to Harvard) could help change that. She sheds light on the origins of these clauses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ways in which they have been largely gutted by court decisions, and what can be done to resuscitate them today.

Of the many lessons, one is simple: getting a constitutional amendment on the books is only half the battle, and often not the more difficult half. [Ilya Somin, Jotwell]

State constitution clauses that require compensation for “damaging” property is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Property law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Investigative series: NYC home seizures is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 21 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Housing roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Environment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Traditional Anglo-American law grants to a property owner as a matter of course not only the right to exclude guns, but also to ask of customers and other invitees that, as a condition of their visit, they agree to assume the risk of some “defensible hazards” contemplated by the law, such as harm occasioned by roaming wild animals. Is it too much to ask that gun advocates promote the actual rights prescribed by the Second Amendment against government infringement — which certainly could use promotion right now — rather than infringe traditional individual property and contract liberties by inventing spurious new gun “rights”? [Tennessean via Bearing Arms] Earlier on laws restricting property owners’ rights to set rules against guns in parking lots here, here, here, here, related Roger Pilon at Cato, and, also with coverage of “off-duty conduct” as a protected class in discrimination law, here.

Tennessee: “Bill allows suits over gun free zone incidents” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

As I went walking I saw a sign there.
And on the sign it said “(C) — Guthrie estate”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

“Following their successful actions to bring the songs ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’ into the public domain, New York law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz are now taking on a similar action for the Woody Guthrie classic, ‘This Land Is Your Land.'” [IP Flow/Mimesis Law]

Back in 2004, when the successors in interest of Guthrie’s heirs threatened the writers of a politically oriented parody with copyright litigation, Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wondered what Guthrie himself would have thought of the action, given that he once used a copyright notice that said:

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.

The lyrics of “My Land,” including the “No Trespassing” verse lightly altered above, are here, complete with copyright assertion.

This Land Is My Land copyright challenge is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Environment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system