All VLS Courses

Climate Change: The Power of Taxes

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires long-term changes in behavior, and in a capitalist society, industry, businesses, and consumers respond to prices.  Increase in the cost of greenhouse gases can reduce emissions, and reductions in the price of alternatives to fossil fuels can increase their use.  This seminar explores the ways in which tax systems can send these negative and positive price signals in the United States and elsewhere.

Addressing issues of theory, policy, politics, and law, the seminar will cover topics such as the federal tax incentives for renewable energy, alternative fuel vehicles, and energy conservation in the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages, the debate over whether to use carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade approach in the United States, US and European experiences with energy taxes, and the role of tax incentives for land conservation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, perverse incentives.  While focusing on climate change, the seminar will provide students with the framework for understanding how and when to use tax measures to address other environmental problems as well.

Prerequisite:  Income Taxation or permission of instructor.
JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement - Policy.

Satisfies perspective requirement.

Land and the Law of Takings

When does the government go "too far" in regulating land use without compensating the landowner?  This seminar traces the development of the constitutional regulatory takings doctrine in the United States-why it developed, what lines it draws, what voids have not yet been filled, how existing case law applies to various types of situations and whether the lines need to be redrawn by the courts or by legislatures to meet more fully the complex, competing needs of our society.

Through several written assignments, students will have the opportunity to research the law and to write various types of legal documents, such as a court opinion, a research memorandum for a client, and a brief.

Prerequisites:  JD:  Constitutional Law and Land Use.
MELP:   Land Use.
JD/MELP:  Distributional requirement - Regulatory and Policy.

Land Use Regulation

This course reviews and evaluates the traditional American legal controls available to regulate the use of land, including local zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations, as well as more innovative techniques such as growth tempo controls, growth boundaries and transferable development rights.  It examines the relevant statutory basis for these techniques and the constitutional limitations on their use, evaluates their effectiveness in controlling "sprawl," and explores the relative roles of state and local government in land use regulation.

JD/MELP:  Distributional requirements - Regulatory, Policy, and Resource Management/Planning.