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To get more housing we need urbanists & constitutional lawyers to get together & file a lot of lawsuits. That’s the case I make in this post. Here’s a summary thread about it. In short, urbanists & libertarian/conservative lawyers need to talk. & sue. 1/
ij.org/sc_blog/lets-t…
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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There’s lots of recognition that our land-use policies, especially zoning, cause all kinds of societal problems, w/ limited housing at the top of the list (and it’s a long list!). Indeed, there’s started to be some push-back in city and state legislation to address this. 2/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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But we have a long way to go. It’s basically a civil rights movement & is still pretty new. And although what it’s done so far has been very promising, there’s something it’s missing that past civil rights movements have used: constitutional public interest litigation. 3/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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There have been some great & promising starts in some kinds of litigation, using state statutes, or even city ordinances, to make cities simply follow the law to allow more housing. But the language of civil rights is constitutional litigation. And there we haven’t seen much. 4/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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Urbanists (who culturally & economically are usually pretty left-leaning) & free market public interest lawyers (who culturally are all over the place, but economically are, obvs., not left-leaning) both, rightly, believe that land use & zoning are screwed up. 5/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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There’s a question for each group. That for the free market public interest lawyers is why aren’t you suing about it? (Some are, but not many) They’ll tell you it’s because in Euclid v. Amber Realty (1926) the Supreme Court said “you will lose.” And they’re right! Almost . . . 6/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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The same was true in other civil rights movements, but that didn’t stop people from suing. One method has been to use state constitutions. I speculate that maybe why that hasn’t happened more on housing issues is b/c of fallout from the Mount Laurel litigation in NJ. 7/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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I give some reasons why Mount Laurel shouldn’t mean we don’t have litigation in other states. And, indeed, if things go well perhaps we could even go back to federal courts one of these days. 8/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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The question for urbanists is why aren’t you getting together w/ lawyers to encourage this litigation? I think it’s because they’re, understandably, not very familiar w/ the circle of property rights lawyers, like my colleagues at IJ, who do this sort of thing, & our language. 9/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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They know about cases like Euclid or Kelo, but don’t “speak property rights public interest law.” And they don’t need to, but they do need to get to know those who do. 10/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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So here’s the point of the post & this thread—we need urbanists & free market public interest lawyers to learn from each other about how we can advance through constitutional litigation the civil rights cause of building more housing. 11/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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I’m not exactly sure how we do that (maybe we talk to each other on Twitter? A conference? Cocktail hours?), but if the result of it will be constitutional challenges to restrictions on providing housing for people it’ll be time well spent. 12/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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I should end by noting I’m very much one of the property rights lawyers, they’re the people I’ve associated w/ for a long time now. But I do know a few urbanists & know we have a lot in common. Learning from them has vastly improved my outlook on land-use policy. 13/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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Tagging just a few urbanists & property rights lawyers (& journalists) to (1) invite them to glance at my post & (2) maybe get to know each other more. @SonjaTrauss @hanlonbt @lrichardsCNU @clmarohn @strongtowns @cityobs @Richard_Florida @MarketUrbanism 14/
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Anthony Sanders
@IJSanders
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7. lis |
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