Law firm facing little resistance to community rights-based bans on fracking. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is still pitching a perfect game. The public interest law firm has not been hit with an official legal challenge to one of the many "bills of rights" it has drafted for towns whose residents want to keep shale gas drilling out of their communities. The CELDF, based in Mercersburg, Pa., faced a close call in January when officials in a Pennsylvania town threatened to file for an injunction to have a court block enforcement of the charter amendment that was adopted by a popular vote in November 2012.
But ultimately, the officials backed down on the advice of the town's legal adviser. The aborted attempt by officials from Ferguson Township, Pa., to reverse the ordinance represented the first "credible threat of legal action" against a community bill of rights banning shale gas drilling, according to Ben Price, projects director for the CELDF. "That doesn't mean there won't be one. The CELDF Will rights-based approach hold up in court? Regulatory taking. Regulatory taking is a situation in which a government regulates a property to such a degree that the regulation effectively amounts to an exercise of the government's eminent domain power without actually divesting the property's owner of title to the property.
United States law[edit] In common law jurisdictions, governments traditionally enjoy police power, under which a government may regulate a variety of aspects of the lives of its subjects. Under American law, however, this power does not extend to the outright divestiture of title to private property, nor to the de facto equivalent of it. Instead, the power of eminent domain is a separate and distinct power which allows a government to divest a property owner of title to such property for public use, and with just compensation.
Physical occupation[edit] The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as the can occupy or use in connection with the land. Regulatory restriction on use of property[edit] No person ..... Commerce Clause legal definition of Commerce Clause. Commerce Clause synonyms by the Free Online Law Dictionary. Commerce Clause The provision of the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress exclusive power over trade activities among the states and with foreign countries and Indian tribes. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, of the Constitution empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian Tribes. " The term commerce as used in the Constitution means business or commercial exchanges in any and all of its forms between citizens of different states, including purely social communications between citizens of different states by telegraph, telephone, or radio, and the mere passage of persons from one state to another for either business or pleasure.
Intrastate, or domestic, commerce is trade that occurs solely within the geographic borders of one state. As it does not move across state lines, intrastate commerce is subject to the exclusive control of the state. Power to Regulate Although the U.S. The U.S. Acts Constituting Commerce.