Private Property And Public Power

This volume explores the legitimacy of government involvement in private economic actions by presenting a study of property takings. In the first comprehensive study of a city's eminent-domain acquisitions, Debbie Becher explores which properties Philadelphia pursued for private redevelopment and how stakeholders decided that government actions were either a use or abuse of power.

In the years following World War II, the world’s biggest dam was almost built in Hells Canyon on the Snake River in Idaho. Karl Boyd Brooks tells the story of the dam controversy, which became a referendum not only on public-power expansion but also on the environmental implications of the New Deal’s natural resources and economic policy. Private-power critics of the Hells Canyon High Dam posed difficult questions about the implications of damming rivers to create power and to grow crops. Activists, attorneys, and scientists pioneered legal tactics and political rhetoric that would help to define the environmental movement in the 1960s. The debate, however, was less about endangered salmon or threatened wild country and more about who would control land and water and whether state enterprise or private capital would oversee the supply of electricity. By thwarting the dam’s construction, Snake Basin irrigators retained control over water as well as economic and political power in Idaho, putting the state on a postwar path that diverged markedly from that of bordering states. In the end, the opponents of the dam were responsible for preserving high deserts and mountain rivers from radical change. With Public Power, Private Dams, Karl Brooks makes an important contribution not only to the history of the Pacific Northwest and the region’s anadromous fisheries but also to the environmental history of the United States in the period after World War II.

No detailed description available for "Public Property and Private Power".

When it comes to urban planning, to what extent and under what conditions should the community’s interest prevail over the rights of private property owners? Public Interest, Private Property addresses this question at a time when pollution, urban sprawl, and condo booms are forcing municipal governments to adopt prescriptive laws and regulations. Case studies focus on spheres in which public values and private property rights collide – expropriation law, natural resources regulation, green development, and water provision – laying the groundwork for more active debates on the issues currently shaping our cities.

Analysis of the power of multinational corporations in moulding international law on intellectual property rights.

Throughout comparative administrative law there is a concept that is not unequivocally labelled: public power, administrative power or public function. Nor is its semantic load the same in each legal system. This is why it is so difficult to translate it into English, as reflected in the title of this monograph. Nevertheless, in different legal systems this term is of increasing importance in determining the scope of application of administrative law: it is used to identify bodies, tasks or functions that must be subject to specific rules of application and control, laid down by administrative law; in some cases, regarding relationships between privates. This monograph analyses the concept of administrative public power in several European legal systems: firstly, to know the scope of the concept in each legal system, and secondly, to see how it operates as a criterion for the application of administrative law. Although it may seem a conceptual and strictly academic subject, this book is very relevant for the interpretation and practical application of the law, due to the consequences that the concept of public administrative power has for delimiting the legal regime of many activities, both in the public and private sectors.

This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of 'sovereignty' in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states, and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on the Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty, and culture, and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology. This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of ‘sovereignty’ in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on The Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty and culture and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology.