The U.S. Supreme Court's exactions ruling left a lot of things up in the air. Most important: Does California's typical "fair share" methodology for general plan-level exactions meet the court's "rough proportionality" rule?

In a case a month ago involving the Obama Presidential Center, she rejected citizen activists' very expansive claims of a taking of property under the Fifth Amendment.

How the Supreme Court nominee interprets the Endangered Species Act is likely to have a profound impact on land-use patterns in California. >>read more

 President Obama has now nominated two women to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court – and the addition of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- nominated Monday and almost sure to be confirmed -- will definitely give the court a new tilt. But the tilt isn't about gender. It's about geography. In Sotomayor and Kagan, Obama has selected two women who have lived their whole lives in big cities – they're both from New York, though from very different backgrounds (Sotomayor's from the Bronx).