It served as an axiom of Maryland’s constitutional history that settlers carried with them the “rights of Englishmen” when they crossed the Atlantic. In 1642 the Assembly of Maryland Freemen declared Maryland’s provincial judges were to follows the law of England. Maryland’s 1776 Declaration of Independence left a legal lacuna--- what were to be the laws and public institutions of this newly created sovereign entity?  This paper considers the manner in which the sovereign state of Maryland filled the void.

This essay considers the growth of the partnership between David Wallace and Ian McHarg into one of the nation’s dominant urban design and environmental planning firms.  It focuses on the firm’s undertaking in the Greater Baltimore region in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s.  With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight it looks at the successes and failures of their plans for Charles Center, the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys, and the Inner Harbor.  Surprisingly, prize-winning innovations praised in one generation came to be judged as the design flaws of the next.  Less surprisingly, their plans to “design with nature” sometimes were used by their clients to promote racial and economic segregation.

The casebook, which is electronically published in PDF format, is a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland School of Law. It consists of non-copyrighted material and intended for classroom use. Professors and students are free to use it in whole or part. As the Table of Contents indicates, 170 odd cases have been grouped into 36 "sessions." Most sessions consist of four or five tightly-edited cases and the related statutes, if any. The readings are intended to be historically, economically, politically, and legally evocative; they are designed to provide an assignment appropriate for a 55 minute class discussion. The compilation is appoximately 1100 pages in length. It is up-dated annually.

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Land Use Control, Environmental Law and Constitutional Law. It consists of cases carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. It considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. The text consists of non-copyrighted material and readers are free to use it or re-mix it in whole or part. No rights are reserved.

The readings provide an historical context, and an up-to-date focus on many of the constitutional issues facing today’s Supreme Court: imperium versus dominium; the public trust, inverse condemnation, the navigation servitude, the “regulatory taking” issue; the “navigability” boundary on federal power; the “public use” limitation on eminent domain; the balance between property rights and First Amendment liberties; the “essential nexus” between government prohibition and purpose, and; the fine line between taxation and expropriation.

The 149 cases have been grouped into 35 "sessions." Most sessions consist of four or five tightly-edited cases, and the related statutes, if any. The materials are intended to be economically, politically and legally evocative and to provide an assignment appropriate for a class hour of discussion. The compilation is 956 pages in length.

This essay looks at some of the lawyers and judges who were instrumental in the enactment and judicial approval of American zoning laws.

Urban planning is often thought of as a conscious collection of governmental choices made as to the shape and social structure of the city. Thoughtful and forward looking public policies are viewed as mapping out the future. Overlooked or understated in this estimation are the less purposeful influences on the urban morphology and city sociology. This paper examines one such influence, land tenure, by taking a comparative look at the residential development of Birmingham, England, and Baltimore, Maryland, between 1700 and 1900. Birmingham and Baltimore both housed their working class populations in densely-packed dwellings with shared party walls. And both produced and conveyed these dwellings as ninety-nine year leaseholds subject to ground rents. This paper will look at the influence of long-term leasehold tenure on the land, houses, investments and politics of Birmingham and Baltimore. We will see that the two cities share a shape distinctive to leasehold towns, and we will see that a different social attitude toward entailment in the two cities gave ninety-nine year leasehold tenure a different destiny.

This essay examines the historical background behind the 1826 U.S. Supreme Court case of Cassell v. Carroll. The legal merits in the case concerned arcane questions of feudal property law which the Court avoided and left unanswered. Today the case is of little jurisprudential significance.

It is the historical record behind Cassell v. Carroll that tells a story that continues to be of interest and importance today. It provides a window on the economic and social life in provincial Maryland. It tells the tale of two dysfunctional dynasties—the Barons of Baltimore (the Calverts), who lost their faith, their fortune and came to be charged with bastardy, murder and rape, and the family of Carrolls who kept their Catholic faith and amassed great wealth, but still found their good name sullied with allegations of self-dealing, usury, breach of trust, illegitimacy, and slave-driving.

The essay argues that the Carrolls succeeded while Calverts failed because (in today’s parlance) they had a better “business plan.” The Calverts clung to their feudal rights while the Carrolls diversified their investments and plunged into the market economy. Capitalism trumped feudalism.

The essay casts doubts on the sincerity of the revolution rhetoric of “freedom.” This narrative suggests, at least from the viewpoint of the Carroll family, that money not freedom was the driving engine of the American Revolution. The Carrolls were Maryland’s largest holders of slaves and indentured servants and they had no intent of relinquishing them. Captive labor was an important source of their wealth and a necessary factor of production on their agricultural plantations. The Carrolls only hesitantly took the risk of revolution and popular government to increase free trade, to escape perpetual debts, and to increase the supply of money

And finally the story of Cassell v. Carroll turns the arguments of social conservatives upside down. It portrays the cherished right to freely market one’s property for top dollar (which today’s property rights advocates fervently seek preserve) as nothing more than the creation of 15th century judicial activism. And it depicts the American Revolution as an assault on the private property of the ruling elite with the “rule of law” serving as an excuse for the massive confiscation of the land from the rightful owners.

In the American constitutional system the sovereign has the power to enact “regulations which are necessary to the common good and general welfare.” But the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution proscribes that : “No person shall be . . . deprived of . . . property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” And the question of whether a sovereign regulation has “taken” private property without just compensation has puzzled the United States Supreme Court for over two hundred years in over four hundred cases. This paper chronicles the leading cases and finds that the Court’s present interpretation of “regulatory takings” sits upon a shaky foundation of split decisions; the Court’s construction of the “constitutional property” remains a work in progress.

It finds today’s Supreme Court is fundamentally split into two blocs. This “Great Divide” is sometimes attributed to a difference in judicial philosophy. Those in the Court’s conservative wing are typically described as practitioners of “judicial restraint.” Those in the Court’s liberal wing are said to be “judicial activists” who are intent on reconstructing the Constitution’s language to meet the exigencies of the times.

The Court’s “constitutional property” jurisprudence belies this stereotype. Its right wing is seeking to define the Takings Clause, beyond its original meaning, so as to discourage government activity. Conversely the left wing is more than willing to give wide discretion to legislative bodies to impose regulations without paying compensation to disappointed property owners.

The "Anti Skyscraper" Law of 1904 is often described as Maryland's first zoning law and one of the first zoning laws in the United States. But there is more. Behind this dusty statute is a story of speculation, selfishness, collusion and changing social values, which takes a century and a half to unfold and which has something to say about the role of government in regulating the use of land.

On May 15, 1911, Baltimore Mayor J. Barry Mahool signed into law an ordinance for “preserving the peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore City.” This ordinance provided for the use of separate blocks by African American and whites and was the first such law in the nation directly aimed at segregating black and white homeowners. This article considers the historical significance of Baltimore’s first housing segregation law.

Pre-revolutionary Baltimore Town grew rapidly in commerce and population. Its harbor on the Chesapeake Bay served a larger trading area than any other American seaport at the time. In the 1770s two young fortune seekers - Leonard Harbaugh, carpenter and Christopher Hughes, silversmith - arrived in Baltimore from Ireland. This paper explores the role that each played in developing Baltimore's physical, monetary and legal landscape.