Professor Molly Brady’s Scholarship Among Best Land Use Articles of the Year

University of Virginia School of Law professor Molly Brady’s research exploring the history of state damagings clauses has been recognized as one of the best land use articles of 2017-18.

“The Damagings Clauses,” published in the Virginia Law Review, will be republished in the 2019-20 edition of the Land Use and Environment Law Review, an annual, peer-selected compendium by Thomson Reuters of the best land use and environmental law articles of the year. Out of 90 entries considered for the next edition, only four were chosen.

Articles are selected for inclusion in the review after a panel of land use and environmental law faculty from across the nation narrow scores of articles down to 20 finalists. From that group, another panel of legal scholars selects the final honorees.

Parallel to “takings” clauses, 27 state constitutions prohibit the “damaging” or “injuring” of property for public use without just compensation. In her paper, Brady traces the roots of these provisions and argues that the damagings clauses deserve broader applications in condemnation law.

This is just the latest honor for Brady’s scholarship. This June, she will present her paper “Property and Projection” at the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum. Her paper “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds” was co-winner of the 2019 Scholarly Papers Competition, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools. In 2017, she was honored at the Seven Society 27th Annual Monticello Dinner Series for “exemplary scholarship and transformative instruction of students at the University of Virginia School of Law.”

In her scholarship, Brady looks at the history behind legal rules and land use policies, yielding insights on developments in eminent domain law, connections between property and other doctrinal areas, and how different institutions respond to problems in city planning and governance. She joined the faculty as an associate professor of law in 2016.

Professor Michael Livermore’s article “The Perils of Experimentation” was published in the 2018-19 edition of the Land Use and Environment Law Review.