New Episode: Mechanical/Animal
Wolford and Pung on constitutional property
It’s the busy season, so yet another episode of Divided Argument is up — Mechanical/Animal:
We're in triage mode as the Court clears its end-of-term backlog. We run through the week's opinion dump before focusing on two cases that look unrelated but turn on the same question: when may a state rewrite background property law to limit a constitutional right? In Wolford v. Lopez, the Court strikes down Hawaii's rule requiring a property owner's express consent before a firearm may be carried onto otherwise-public premises. Then to Pung v. Isabella County, a takings case asking whether a homeowner whose property is sold for back taxes is owed only the sale proceeds or full fair-market value. Along the way: a theory about a Landor v. Louisiana flip, the week's run of 6-3 conservative wins, and a short detour into the perils of teaching Federal Courts.
Thoughts welcome!
Great podcast! Will was speculating about the fact of the auction lowering the market price. As stated in the opinion, the assessed value of the the Pungs' home prior to the auction was $194,400 and 18 months after the auction (during which it sold for only $76,000) it indeed sold on the open market for $195,000. As pointed out there, the process of the auction is pretty terrible and laborious for buyers, requiring cash purchases in particular. It seems clear to me that is what is limiting the sale price, and not any sort of priced-in risk because of the fact the owners did not pay taxes.
It would be an easy project to look at, assessed priced, auction prices, and post-auction sale prices and see how many terrible cases there are that drag down the average but if the Pung's house is any guide, the market price of risk ought to be low. Based on this case alone, for market price of risk to make sense as the explanation for the low auction prices there would need to be more than one worthless property for every Pung's that is bought at a 60% discount and sold shortly after sold for assessed value.
What stood out to me about the Hawaii law was that it seemed designed to frustrate any effective way (eg digital registry) for gun carriers to learn where they were allowed without public (and potentially unpopular) signage. Might have been a way to reach the result on a tiers of scrutiny style approach.