The Urban Lawyer 52:3

Employees

The Justice Department’s Sexual Harassment Workplace Initiative and Its Urgent Message to State and Local Governments

Michelle L. Wade & Susan R. Fiorentino

The DOJ’s Sexual Harassment Workplace Initiative (SHWI) is designed to prevent and correct sexual harassment in state and local workplaces. SHWI aligns with the goal of increased civility in municipalities and should be embraced by those employers.

Local Government

Evaluating De Novo Review of Municipal Land-Use Decisions in New England: The Consequencesof Starting Anew

Andrew Loin

This Article evaluates the standards of review applied to land use decisions in the New England states. The Article then discusses the problematic nature of de novo review of these decisions and proposes legislative and technological solutions.

Homelessness

Fair Share Planning for Locally Undesirable Land Uses (LULUs)

Sean Connolly, Elizabeth (Nikki) Miller & Julie Zhu

This paper examines the way undesired facilities are sited in New York City. It identifies shortcomings with the city’s current distribution of such facilities and proposes possible ways to improve both fairness and efficiency in the siting process.

Environment

Climate Change in Unincorporated California: The Consequences of Limited Regulation for Land Use, Lodging, and Livelihoods in the Wildland Urban Interface

Lauren Ashley Week

Using the LNU Lightning Complex wildfire, this article analyzes limited federal, state, and local regulation of the WUI and its impact in California’s unincorporated communities, offering options for protecting homes and promoting affordable housing.

Book Excerpt: Constitutional Policing: Striving for a More Perfect Union PDF

Michael A. Hardy

The Founding Fathers’ governing document allows for course corrections to protect core liberties. These principles lay at the center of racial equity and equal protection, but concerns exist in the impact policing has in the lives of its citizens. PDF

Book Excerpt: Heirs’ Property and the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act PDF

Thomas W. Mitchell & Erica Levine Powers

This excerpt from the leading book about heirs’ property details how abusive litigation has dispossessed thousands of families of their property and how an unexpectedly successful and widely adopted model state statute has been curtailing the abuse. PDF