“The new Haar and Wolf land use casebook does an impressive job of exploring the evolving, broad, and nuanced landscape of land use law. This casebook will be quite useful in educating the thoughtful and versatile land use lawyer of today and the future, because of its rich and balanced approach. It will also be quite accessible to planning students and other non-law students taking a course in land use law. The casebook focuses on the cutting-edge intersection of land use regulation and environmental protection, without treating the two topics as the same or ignoring important non-environmental issues in land use. As legal historians, the co-authors provide considerable historical context for contemporary land use law and issues, without dwelling in history for the sake of history. The preface asserts the centrality of cases that set forth important legal principles, yet the well-selected judicial opinions are interwoven with substantial treatment of non-litigation processes, statutory and regulatory tools, theory, planning perspectives, non-judicial forces shaping land use, and practical considerations. There is much here for the professor who thinks students should know as much about what city councils and planning commissions do as they know about what judges do. The co-authors raise questions critical of planning, regulation, and private land-use controls, yet they do not “trash” any of these methods that students need to understand in order to solve land-use problems and contribute to this ever-evolving field.”
Tony Arnold, Boehl Chair in Property & Land Use, University of Louisville
