That tall glass of water, the place called “home,” a morning jog at the local park; these are all affected by property laws. But while many people may not ponder the ground they walk on, a group of experts spent a day examining the impact of laws governing real property.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s 11th annual Richard E. Nelson Symposium hosted 11 experts in the field of property law to present “Digging up some Dirt (Law): How Recent Developments in Real Property Law Affect Landowners and Local Governments,” covering topics of eminent domain, conservation easements, adverse possession and mortgages.

More than 200 students, lawyers and presenters gathered in the UF Hilton Conference Center on Friday, Feb. 10,  to hear presentations by law professors from around the country, including Carol N. Brown, professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law; Alex M. Johnson, Jr., Pierre Bowen Professor of Law, and director of the Center for the Study and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law; Ann Marie Cavazos, director of clinical programs and associate professor at Florida A&M College of Law; and Jessica Owley, associate professor at the University of Buffalo Law School.

“While some skeptics might think that concepts such as adverse possession and easements are relics of the past, the reality is that they have a real impact on people and places in the 21st century,” said UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law.

Wolf’s opening speech “Diamonds in the Rough or Snakes in the Grass?: Evaluating Recent Shifts in American Real Property Law,” gave insight into the recent developments in real property law, also known as “dirt law.” Changes that are likely to benefit society were labeled diamonds in the rough and those that will be ultimately harmful were deemed snakes in the grass.

“It struck me that some recent real property developments were positive, others negative and others a mixed bag,” Wolf said.

Eminent domain was a hot topic with two presentations discussing the impact of recent eminent domain court cases and legislation. UF Law students Paul J. D’Alessandro Jr. (2L) and Tamara Van Heel (2L) detailed the recent Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London, which affirmed the government’s power to transfer property from one private citizen to another through eminent domain.

Cavazos decried the Florida Legislature’s reaction to eminent domain law in the wake of Kelo.

“Florida has gone overboard,” said Cavazos, a proponent of the eminent domain proceedings that she said make beautiful cities and vibrant economic communities like Orlando and St. Petersburg possible.

Although Florida is the originator of one-fifth of all eminent domain condemnations, the Florida Legislature recently passed laws requiring a three-fifths vote from each house of the Legislature to approve eminent domain proceedings. Cavazos suggested Florida may be undermining local government in its task of bettering society through the acquisition and sale of private property.

Another discussion about property laws affecting Gainesville residents concerned perpetual conservation easements, which are legally enforceable land preservation agreements. Owley discussed the negative impact of perpetual conservation easements, which she said are inflexible solutions to environmental protection problems in a time when climate and biological knowledge is shifting.

“Money is scarce,” said Alachua County Attorney David Wagner in support of Owley’s assertion that perpetual conservation easements have vastly negative effects. The operating budget for a land trust in Alachua County is around $62,000. When money is scare, the upkeep of easements is difficult to maintain. Destructive elements in Florida’s ecosystems like feral pigs and invasive plant species cannot be properly eradicated.

Ramesh Buch, Program Manager of the Alachua County Forever Land Conservation Program described the perils of purchasing land trusts, such as governments chasing deals and losing sight of what the taxpayers want.

On the other hand, proponents of perpetual conservation easements focus on the positive impact. Buch described popular perpetual easement acquisitions made by Alachua County and their safety from “society’s whims.”

Two perpetual easements that Gainesville residents enjoy on a daily basis are the Kanapaha Prairie, and Murphree Wellfield and Santa Fe River Tracts. The tracts protect wildlife and provide drinking water for Gainesville and surrounding areas.

The symposium is named in honor of Richard E. Nelson, who served with distinction as Sarasota County attorney for 30 years, and his wife, Jane Nelson – two UF alumni who gave more than $1 million to establish the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, which is responsible for the annual event. Their support of the Levin College of Law’s Environmental and Land Use Program has been key to the program’s success and national recognition for excellence.

The symposium is co-sponsored by The Florida Bar’s Environmental and Land Use Law Section and County and Local Government Section.

“Our goal is to highlight developments of interest to local government attorneys and to bring together legal academics and practitioners to explore mutual areas of interest,” Wolf said.

“First of all, instead of thinking about possession, I want you to think about dispossession,” Fennell said. “Unfortunately, this does not require a lot of imagination because we have this housing crisis going on around us and there is a lot of it happening right here in Florida.”

According to RealtyTrac, a California-based real estate tracking company, one in 17 housing units in Florida had at least one foreclosure filing in 2009. The company also reported that in 2009, nearly one-half of Florida’s residential mortgages were “underwater,” a scenario where the value of the house is less than the balance due on the mortgage.

“So, we see a lot of dispossession happening around us and it causes a lot of concern,” Fennell said. “As we abstract away from these statistics, we have a depressingly common scenario of a family living in a house they can no longer afford, whether it’s because the mortgage has become unaffordable, or whether it’s because the breadwinner has lost his or her job. Either way, we have a situation where we end up having property rights and possession pulling apart and something’s got to give.”

Fennell explained that either property rights are going to be enforced in a way that cause possession to end, maybe very painfully, or property rights will have to be altered in some way that will allow possession to continue.

“We know that there is a great concern from a policy perspective with dispossession and it’s not limited to these current crises,” Fennell said.

“Similar issues about dispossession come up when we think about landlord-tenant law and we think about policies that are designed to help protect tenants against being displaced due to rising rent levels. We even see concerns about possession being brought up in other legal doctrines like adverse possession.”

Fennell said that many scholars have written on the concerns of dispossession, including former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. when he gave one rationale for why we might have something like prescriptive rights or adverse possession, a principle of real estate law where somebody who possesses the land of another for an extended period of time may be able to claim legal title to that land.

In his 1897 Harvard Law Review article, “The Path of the Law,” Holmes wrote “A thing which you have enjoyed and used as your own for a long time, whether property or an opinion, takes root in your being and cannot be torn away without your resenting the act and trying to defend yourself, however you came by it.”

“So we have this idea that dispossession is really bad,” Fennell said. “If we think that dispossession is problematic, and if we also think that part of what property law is designed to do is to provide continuity of possession and stability of possession, then why is it the case that in the United States, where we have very well developed property rights, that we also have a lot of insecurity of tenure with a lot of people who might be at risk of losing their possessions.”

Fennell explained that those suffering from home loss or are “underwater” is due to external forces that are outside of their control. “Could there be a way to have something that gives you more of what people really want from homeownership including the ability to stay in the home without necessarily carrying all of the risk?” she said.

Fennell suggested the development of local housing market indexes might be one way to address this risk.

“These indexes could be important because it potentially allows us to separate the home’s appreciation,” Fennell said. “Was it due to some really clever remodel or was it because the housing market got better? If we have indexes that could kind of peg the initial purchase price to a certain level and look at how much home prices in the area have increased, it may offer a platform for being able to trade risk better.”

The Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf and his wife, Betty. Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, is the general editor of a 17-volume treatise, Powell on Real Property, the most referenced real property treatise in the country, which is regularly cited by the courts, including several citations in the U.S. Supreme Court. Last year, Wolf condensed the 60 year-old treatise into Powell on Real Property: Michael Allan Wolf Desk Edition (LexisNexis 2009) and recently co-authored Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (Eli Press).

Past scholars who have delivered the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property include, Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.

Fennell will be on the University of Florida Levin College of Law campus to deliver the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property. The free lecture, titled “Possession Puzzles,” will be held in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom (room 180). The law school community is encouraged to attend.

Fennell said a primary rationale for property rights is the capacity to deliver the benefits of secure possession, but making property entitlements easier to break apart and alienate can also increase the risk of dispossession.

“Cutting back on the choices afforded to homeowners is an alternative that comes with a high price tag – diminished access to real property,” Fennell said. “During my lecture, I hope to provide insight on how relevant tradeoffs might be approached, and how property bundles might be structured in residential contexts to advance stable possession without sacrificing access.”

Fennell received her JD magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1990. She came to the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law in 1999, after practicing at Pettit & Martin, the State and Local Legal Center, Washington, D.C., and the Virginia School Boards Association. In 2001, she became an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Law and in 2004, an associate professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. She was promoted to professor at Illinois in 2006 and returned to the University of Chicago Law School faculty as a professor in 2007. Fennell is the author of The Unbounded Home: Property Values Beyond Property Lines (Yale University Press).

“In the past decade, Professor Fennell’s creative mind has produced some of the most provocative real property scholarship,” Wolf said. “We are very excited that she is joining the list of distinguished experts who have visited UF College of Law under the auspices of the Wolf Family Lecture.”

The lecture series was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf and his wife, Betty. Wolf, the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law, is the general editor of a 17-volume treatise, Powell on Real Property, the most referenced real property treatise in the country, which is regularly cited by the courts, including several citations in the U.S. Supreme Court. Last year, Wolf condensed the 60 year-old treatise into Powell on Real Property: Michael Allan Wolf Desk Edition (LexisNexis 2009) and recently co-authored Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (Eli Press).

“It is a great honor to join the list of accomplished speakers who have given the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property,” Fennell said. “I am excited to have the chance to exchange ideas with members of the university’s College of Law community on a property topic of such immediate relevance and enduring resonance.”

Past scholars who have delivered the Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property include Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.