Can Public Trust Rights Re-Emerge?: The Takings Clause Implications of \u3cem\u3eUnited States v. 32.42 Acres of Land\u3c/em\u3e

In 2005, the United States took by eminent domain about 32.42 acres of prime San Diego coastland that had been subject to California’s public tidelands trust. In the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California State Lands Commission argued that although the state public trust may not apply to the land while in federal hands post-taking, the trust should re-emerge to burden the property if the federal government later transfers it to a private party. In 2012, the Ninth Circuit rejected this argument, holding in United States v. 32.42 Acres of Land that the federal taking permanently extinguished the state public tidelands trust applicable to the property. This Comment argues that in terminating the state public trust on the San Diego property, the Ninth Circuit failed to consider the degree to which its decision enables unconstitutional evasion of the public use requirement of the Takings Clause by facilitating economic development takings that eliminate a vast amount of public benefit but create relatively little in return

Multiple Sclerosis Susceptibility-Associated SNPs Do Not Influence Disease Severity Measures in a Cohort of Australian MS Patients

Recent association studies in multiple sclerosis (MS) have identified and replicated several single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) susceptibility loci including CLEC16A, IL2RA, IL7R, RPL5, CD58, CD40 and chromosome 12q13–14 in addition to the well established allele HLA-DR15. There is potential that these genetic susceptibility factors could also modulate MS disease severity, as demonstrated previously for the MS risk allele HLA-DR15. We investigated this hypothesis in a cohort of 1006 well characterised MS patients from South-Eastern Australia. We tested the MS-associated SNPs for association with five measures of disease severity incorporating disability, age of onset, cognition and brain atrophy. We observed trends towards association between the RPL5 risk SNP and time between first demyelinating event and relapse, and between the CD40 risk SNP and symbol digit test score. No associations were significant after correction for multiple testing. We found no evidence for the hypothesis that these new MS disease risk-associated SNPs influence disease severity