A government agency offers you a permit, but only if you agree to give up land, waive a right, or pay a fee that appears unrelated to the permit’s purpose. A regulator conditions approval of a development project on the owner’s agreement to provide public access across private property. A city demands a dedication of… Read more »
Government agencies in California exercise significant power over people’s lives. A city can deny a permit. A county can order a property demolished. Police can make an arrest. Code enforcement can shut down a business. Not every exercise of that power is lawful. But an unlawful government decision is not automatically a civil rights violation…. Read more »
Many California property owners think of constitutional rights in broad terms. These protections can involve property rights, due process, and limits on government power. However, two constitutional frameworks may apply to these issues: the United States Constitution and the California Constitution. In many situations, the California Constitution provides broader protections. That distinction is not merely… Read more »
Government authority in the United States is not unlimited. The federal government operates within the powers the Constitution grants to it. State governments exercise broad authority, but they operate within both the federal Constitution and their own state constitutions. Local governments in California exercise only the authority state law grants to them. That structure of… Read more »
When a government official violates your constitutional rights, the harm is not necessarily addressed through the criminal system. Federal civil rights law provides a separate mechanism: a civil lawsuit filed directly against the government actor responsible. That mechanism is codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Section 1983 is not a law that creates constitutional rights…. Read more »
Forty Years of Deference to Federal Agencies Ended in a Single Supreme Court Opinion For forty years, when a federal agency interpreted an ambiguous statute in a way that was merely reasonable, even if a court might have read the law differently, courts were required to defer to the agency’s interpretation. This principle, known as… Read more »
A Sixteen-Word Phrase That Decides Some of the Biggest Cases in American Law Tucked into the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is a single clause, just sixteen words long, that has been the legal basis for some of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in American history. It has… Read more »
A Missing Piece of Paper That Reshaped American Government In the final hours of his presidency, John Adams signed a stack of judicial appointments late into the night. One of those appointments, a commission naming William Marbury as a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia, was signed and sealed but never delivered…. Read more »
The Agency That Investigates You Also Convicts You, Fines You, and Keeps the Money Imagine you own a home along the California coast. One day, the California Coastal Commission opens an enforcement investigation against you. It assigns its own staff to investigate. Those same staff recommend charges. The Commission holds a hearing where it decides… Read more »
