Eric Shear

Bomb damage or rent control? That was the caption under a series of photographs in a 1981 book about rent control across the world. Looking at the photos, it was impossible to tell the difference. 

When I graduated from law school in Michigan in 2008, the state had fallen on hard economic times, even before the nation’s Great Recession.

The ratio of the median house price by the median gross (before tax) annual household income.

The American spirit is synonymous with a can-do attitude—we are builders, creators, and innovators.

The worrisome decline in US home ownership hasn’t killed the dream of having a place of one’s own.

Federal Laws can be valuable tools for protecting the environment. But as a result, environmental laws also limit the ability of property owners to protect public resources.

A healthy environment is critical to human flourishing. Without clean water, air, and soil, people cannot achieve their full potential. But too often, overzealous government bureaucrats and misguided activists have twisted well-meaning environmental laws. The result has been the violation of property rights and other liberties. Two related aspects of modern-day environmental law make this situation worse: it’s politicized, and it’s out of date. Take the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—the premier federal wildlife protection statute. The ESA establishes a two-tiered framework for the protection of wildlife: “endangered” status for the most imperiled species and “threatened” status for those less in danger of extinction. The law prohibits—on pain of significant civil and criminal penalties—the injuring or harming of any endangered species, but it gives federal agencies the discretion to decide how much to protect threatened species.

Several years ago, local officials in the small town of Marquette, Michigan, planned to build a road so that large industrial mining trucks would bypass busy city streets and schools. By providing a shorter, more efficient route, the new road would assist local industry, make city streets safer, and decrease pollution by saving more than 450,000 gallons of fuel yearly.

On October 2, 2018, Rose Knick called PLF with an important question: How many quarters should she bring for the coin-operated lockers at the U.S. Supreme Court building? 

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major victory for PLF client Edward Poitevent on November 27 in the case of Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the infamous “phan- tom frog” case, involving the feds’ abuse of the Endangered Species Act through critical habitat designations. But the decision is more than just a win for one client; it’s a big win for private property rights and government accountability.

When most people think about environmental laws, they think about holding bad actors responsible for polluting air or water or destroying public lands. This makes sense: the government has a legitimate role in prohibiting noxious activities that infringe on the rights of others.

Whoever coined the saying “you can’t beat something with nothing” understood why it isn’t enough to highlight where environmental regulation falls short, whether by failing to achieve environmental goals or failing to honor fundamental fairness. We also need to identify solutions that do better.