Introduction

• Library: At the Cutting Edge: Land Use Law from The Urban Lawyer (ABA) (2014 Ed.)

I am extremely pleased and honored to have been asked by the editor of the At the Cutting Edge series, Dwight Merriam, to offer this introduction to yet another fine collection of articles. This is a great concept—taking the best of the best from the "hot topics" presentations at the meetings of the American Bar Association's Section of State and Local Government Law and republishing them after their initial publication in the preeminent quarterly scholarly journal, The Urban Lawyer. What the Section set out to do—to make its "cutting-edge" scholarship available to a much wider audience—it has fully achieved in the past and continues to do so with this volume.

As a land use control law teacher and attorney for 50 years, it is readily apparent to me that what is offered in At the Cutting Edge 2014 comprehensively covers the subjects that are of the greatest importance and interest today. These eight articles, as you will soon learn when reading them, go right to the heart of the controversies and often unresolved issues currently facing us in land use law. More important, what is striking about the treatment of the subject matter in these articles is that good, practical advice is provided along with the insights that you would expect from a rigorous intellectual analysis.

The first article is by Daniel P. Dalton with the latest on RLUIPA, The Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act—Recent Decisions and Developments. Dalton is one of the most experienced RLUIPA lawyers in the country. He represents religious plaintiffs exclusively and up until this year had never lost a case (that recent loss is on appeal). He knows the subject matter, and although he has the perspective of a trial lawyer who takes sides, he has given us a comprehensive and evenhanded treatment. Dalton, as you would expect, covers all of the important RLUIPA cases and issues. His discussion of the unsettled question of ripeness in RLUIPA cases is especially good. Unlike many writers who take the obvious route and discuss only judicial decisions, Dalton goes beyond that to report on several important settlements. Much of the action in RLUIPA litigation today is not in what the courts decide, but how the parties resolve the conflict. He sums up RLUIPA with this:

While the progress being made by these courts is evident, several of the aforementioned cases demonstrate that uncertainty and ambiguity remain with respect to many areas of RLUIPA interpretation. This uncertainty and ambiguity will surely lead to more

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