3,010 research outputs found
Skycourts and skygardens: towards a vertical urban theory
The public realm has given birth to alternative social spaces that have been created as a means of replenishing the loss of open space within the modern city. The creation of more hybrid building forms and typologies that balance open space within high density development is a phenomenon increasingly being realised in Asian cities, and has started to redefine the tall building within the city. This thesis focuses on two semi-‐public social spaces that cross the urban-‐architectural-‐landscape boundaries -‐ skycourts and skygardens.
It considers them in light of their social, economic, environmental and spatial contribution to the urban habitat. The thesis argues that they are ‘alternative’ social spaces that form part of a broader, multi-‐level open space infrastructure that replenishes the loss of open space within the urban habitat. It sets out to illustrate how such semi-‐public spaces can be incorporated into high-‐rise structures, and be suitably placed into a hierarchy that supports the primary figurative spaces on the ground or, in their absence, create them in the sky.
It was observed that skycourts and skygardens have become another social space within the urban vocabulary of the city, yet currently remains predominantly managed by the corporation or landowner that controls them. They are differentiated from their public counterparts by the fact that they can never be truly public unless they become ceded to state ownership and permit the individual, group or association the freedoms of speech, action and movement that one normally finds in the public domain of the street and the square.
Despite not being public spaces, skycourts and skygardens have evolved given changing social, spatial, environmental, cultural, economic and technological needs that have engendered public domain characteristics. This may bode well for society’s co-‐presence and may enhance urban life quality as well as the natural and built environment
Implications of spatial distributions of snow mass and melt rate for snow-cover depletion: observations in a subarctic mountain catchment
Observed Effects of a Changing Step-Edge Density on Thin-Film Growth Dynamics
We grew SrTiO3 on SrTiO3 [001] by pulsed laser deposition, while observing
x-ray diffraction at the (0 0 .5) position. The drop dI in the x-ray intensity
following a laser pulse contains information about plume-surface interactions.
Kinematic theory predicts dI/I = -4sigma(1-sigma), so that dI/I depends only on
the amount of deposited material sigma. In contrast, we observed experimentally
that |dI/I| < 4sigma(1-sigma), and that dI/I depends on the phase of x-ray
growth oscillations. The combined results suggest a fast smoothing mechanism
that depends on surface step-edge density.Comment: 4 figure
All Your Air Right Are Belong to Us
Privacy and property rights are tricky subjects for a variety of reasons. One reason is that they have a unique relationship with each other, and this Article focuses on one of those areas of intersection – that of air rights and invasion of privacy. This is a timely topic due the advent of drones, and this Article will argue that drone surveillance constitutes common law trespass and that any statute or regulation that permits such activity is in derogation of common law and so should be subject to particularly careful thought and consideration.
This is not as straightforward a thesis as one might perhaps think because both property and privacy rights have a murky past and have gone through iterative formulations as society has sought to achieve the right balance between the public and private spheres. Privacy has historically focused on expectations of privacy, and property rights have traditionally provided such expectations, but the legally recognized nature of each has not changed over time to keep pace with technological innovation. This has led to a situation where the kinds of rights and causes of action that have traditionally protected individuals no longer suffice in a variety of circumstances.
In particular, the use of drone technology to engage in sophisticated surveillance presents significant challenges our existing legal framework. Part I of this Article examines the history of privacy law in some detail, and Part II does the same with respect to the common law of airspace property rights. When these two areas of the law are examined in tandem, it becomes apparent that drone surveillance violates rights that society generally wants to protect and that society has historically protected. That protection, however, is now lacking. There is some reason for the failure of the law to keep up with this type of new technology, and Part III examines the historical “aircraft exception” that many may now believe justifies the law’s acquiescence in the face of drone surveillance. Ultimately, though, this Article concludes that this common law exception is not applicable to drones and that, as such, the law should adapt to protect the public from drone surveillance. Part IV concludes this analysis by making a number of recommendations that state and federal legislatures and various administrative agencies would do well to consider when passing laws and promulgating rules regarding drone technology
Let My Arm Be Broken Off at the Elbow
Though the American legal system is deferential toward religion and churches, it is undeniable that the Church of Latter-day Saints-and other like organizations-are not just churches. They are, instead, important participants in the market economy, some of them global business enterprises of major proportions. This twinning of profit and spirit is seamless for many religions, with numerous modem churches preaching a prosperity gospel that promises spiritual and temporal blessings in return for donations. \u27 Still other churches-such as the Church of Scientology-directly charge for religious services that are necessary for spiritual improvement and advancement in the church hierarchy. And still others accumulate their own reserves of property and wealth. This asset assemblage leads, ineluctably, to enormous income and wealth concentrated in the hands of religious organizations across America.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with religious organizations amassing wealth, it is troubling that they do so while enjoying informational and tax advantages not afforded to other entities. However, these benefits are not tax advantages; these are tax advantages that are expressly made unavailable to other, competing, profit-seeking entities that suffer greatly due to their comparative disadvantage. Indeed, this Article\u27s foundational claim is these advantages are so significant that they have come to shape the aims and actions of many religions, effectively bending the nature of many organizations away from traditionally religious and charitable work and toward profit-seeking. This state is both unintended and inequitable. As such, these advantages should be eliminated
Well Enough Alone: Liability for Wrongful Foreclosure
Part I of this Article both sets the stage for the current environment, in which banks and their officers and directors are under the spotlight and face an increasing amount of pressure due to their perceived role in the instigation of the Great Recession, and then examines in detail improvident lending and wrongful foreclosure, two of the wrongful acts banks have committed in connection with our current financial crisis that have generated a substantial amount of public interest and comment.
Part II examines the potential of officer and director liability for these disparate elements of the Great Recession, looking first at the traditional scope of officer and director liability, and then turning to current calls to fundamentally expand this liability.
Finally, Part III argues that the traditional scope of officer and director liability is sufficient, in the context of wrongful foreclosure, such that no expansion of responsibility is called for. This is because wrongful foreclosure, while a concrete and important part of our recent banking travails, is not implicated in the commencement or propagation of the Great Recession, which is the primary justification given for increased liability. Accordingly, this Article concludes that no expansion of liability for wrongful foreclosure is called for
A Theoretical Case for Standardized Vesting Documents
As it stands now, no one familiar with real estate law or commerce would expect different parties in different jurisdictions to record identical, or even similar, instruments. In an immediate sense, this heterogeneity of the recorded documents (“vesting heterogeneity”) does not seem a good thing: parties utilizing the recording system generally seek to make known, or to discern, the same generic type of information?that is, evidence of claims upon property?so why are different forms and types of documents utilized all over the country? This Article analyzes this vesting heterogeneity from a new perspective and concludes that it is, in fact, cause for significant concern. Vesting heterogeneity has arisen organically, growing with the recording system as they both evolved over time. This historical explanation does not, however, excuse the cost associated with such a lack of uniformity. Anyone seeking information with respect to any piece of property must navigate the complexities and uncertainties that arise because all such information is heterogeneous and, as a consequence, difficult to understand and utilize. This represents both an immediate transactional cost and an increased risk of ill-informed behavior. This is particularly troublesome because this sort of cost-based concern arising from variability has a well-established analogue in property law that the law clearly desires to avoid. That analogue is the cost that would arise if property law were to permit unlimited property forms and gives rise to what is known as the numerus clausus theory. This theory explains the law’s hostility toward new, or different, types of property and holds that such heterogeneity is not generally permitted because of the extremely high informational costs associated with such creativity. This Article suggests that this common law concept can, and should, inform our analysis of vesting heterogeneity and that it precipitates strongly against such lack of uniformity. This is because the costs that drive the numerus clausus to hold that variability should be limited are strikingly similar to those created by variability of vesting documents. As such, this theory is relevant here such that the same analysis should be applied to vesting heterogeneity by asking whether a different (or “new”) document is helpful enough to outweigh the informational costs inherent therein. Based on this reasoning, this Article concludes that the law is wrong to systematically ignore heterogeneity in vesting documents. Instead, a numerus clausus type of analysis should be applied to new or different vesting documents to determine whether any inherent lack of uniformity is defensible. Where it is not, uniformity should be imposed
Preslar v. Commissioner: Debt-Discharge Income and its Rationale
In Preslar v. Commissioner, the Tenth Circuit examined the “disputed debt” exception and concluded that the result was at odds with similar holdings from the Third Circuit. The Third and Tenth Circuits interpret the underlying logic of debt discharge income differently. The Third Circuit invokes the disputed-debt exception when the original debt is either unenforceable or unliquidated, while the Tenth Circuit invokes the exception only when the original amount is unliquidated.
The Tenth Circuit stated that the exception “rests on the premise that if a taxpayer disputes the original amount of a debt . . ., a subsequent settlement of that dispute is ‘treated as the amount of debt cognizable for tax purposes.’” There being no evidence of a good faith dispute over the amount of the debt, the disputed-debt exception could not be invoked to surpass the debt-discharge income rule. By taxing people when an asset is freed through loan-forgiveness, the IRS ensures that those taxpayers do not arbitrarily receive tax-free consumption.
The Tenth Circuit should have found that the method of payment can affect the amount of the debt, that a dispute as to method can be a dispute as to amount, and that, following the Tax Court\u27s factual findings, the Preslars had a legitimate dispute as to method and amount. A debt-discharge should not be excluded from gross income when it is disputed only as to enforceability. However, having adopted the correct rationale and exception construction, the court promptly misapplied it
The Shape of Property
“Shape” means “a mode of existence or form of being having identifying features” or the “form or embodiment” of something. Form and feature, in turn, arise from pressure and time. Property law has a shape all its own: it exists as a unique body of law, with distinctive conventions and rules. And that shape, those conventions and rules, derive from a variety of pressures that have, over the centuries, molded property law into its present form. This paper seeks to understand and explain the shape of a particular area of property law – that of property forms.
Of course, this attempt does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, the shape of property law and the source of that shape has received quite a lot of attention recently, and this paper is a direct response to that discussion. In particular, Thomas W. Merrill and Henry E. Smith have written extensively about the numerus clausus principle, a term which means “the number is closed.” This is a shorthand way to describe the fact that property can only exist in certain standardized forms. Merrill and Smith have done much to popularize this concept as a unique and “deeply entrenched” element of property law. They argue that this limitation on the number of property forms has always existed in the underlying fabric of our common law and take the term from civil law countries, in which forms of ownership are clearly limited to those permitted under civil code. They claim that the numerus clausus describes and explains why property law is so narrowly proscribed when it comes to common law restrictions on property types.
Further, Merrill and Smith have discussed, at great length, their view of what has led to this underlying limitation in property law. They argue that the pressure that created the numerus clausus effect comes from a self-imposed informational cost-benefit analysis wherein courts habitually focus on whether a new property type provides informational benefits that exceed the marginal informational costs thereof.
This description of and explanation for property law have generated significant interest over the last decade or so. Many recent articles have focused on the concept of the numerus clausus, and either built upon or criticized the informational burden analysis developed by Merrill and Smith to explain it. Among those articles are two of mine, which built upon the numerus clausus as posited by Merrill and Smith. In A Theoretical Case for Standardized Vesting Documents (“SVD”), I first argued that this same cost-benefit analysis should apply to vesting documents, a very specific area of property law. Later, in Why is Property so Hard? (“WPH”), I expanded the argument, contending that the informational burden analysis proposed by Merrill and Smith ought not to be limited to vesting heterogeneity. The argument was that the informational pressures identified by Merrill and Smith are present in all areas of property law and, therefore, the informational benefit analysis driving the numerus clausus ought to act on the many, many areas of variability laced throughout property law.
I continue to believe in the validity of these normative arguments. However, I have come to believe that the contrast between these arguments and the actual shape of property law belies the underlying validity of Merrill and Smith’s theses regarding the numerus clausus. More specifically, the informational burden analysis propounded by Merrill and Smith does seem to explain the peculiarly homogeneity associated with the fixed number of property forms available throughout our system. But that analysis should also have the same effect on other areas of property law, and it clearly has not.
I believe that this failure to affect other areas of property law indicates that the numerus clausus does not arise due to the type of informational burden analysis propounded by Merrill and Smith. In other words, if the courts truly adopted and applied the type of informational burden analysis described by Merrill and Smith, then they would do so in all areas of property law. Property law is notoriously haphazard, in contrast to other areas of the law, and the court’s failure to remedy this heterogeneity (despite the same efficiency pressures extant in connection with property form issues) indicates that this judicial weighing of informational benefits and burdens simply does not occur in any area of the law. Part I lays the foundation for this argument in greater detail by reviewing the numerus clausus and contrasting Merrill and Smith’s contentions with my own previous analyses.
So, if the pressure to create informational efficiencies does not lead to the numerus clausus, what does? Part II answers this question by focusing on the historical setting in which property law developed. Often overlooked, legal history frequently explains why and how the law developed. I believe that is the case here. Rather than arising from a subtextual analyses regarding informational burdens, homogeneity of property forms arises from a series of ancient statutes meant to protect governmental revenue. These statutes narrowed the type of property that one could create in order to restrict the manner in which people were able to transfer land, thus ensuring that the English crown’s transfer tax stream would not be jeopardized.
The Article concludes that our property system, inefficient as it is, has been shaped by organic forces over the centuries. The numerus clausus, then, is a valid description of the current shape of property law, but it does not arise in the manner that many academics and commentators claim
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