Housing

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Volume 93.1
Settlements of Adhesion
Nicole Summers
Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Affiliated Scholar, American Bar Foundation.

For very helpful feedback on prior versions of this piece, I thank Russell Engler, David Luban, David Hoffman, Tal Kastner, Timothy Mulvaney, Michael Pollack, Tanina Rostain, Kathryn Sabbeth, Emily Saltzberg, Emily Satterthwaite, Jessica Steinberg, Neel Sukhatme, and Josh Teitelbaum. This Article benefited from presentations at the Harvard-Yale-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum, the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, the 2024 Access to Justice Roundtable, the Property Worksin- Progress Workshop, the State and Local Courts Workshop, and the State and Local Government Law Workshop. Emmeline Basco provided excellent research assistance and Yi Yao provided excellent assistance with data analysis. I am very grateful to the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for their outstanding editorial work. All errors are my own.

Eviction cases make up over a quarter of all cases filed in the federal and state civil courts and have enormous consequences for tenants, who are nearly always unrepresented by counsel. These cases overwhelmingly settle, yet settlement scholars have entirely overlooked eviction both empirically and theoretically. The Article presents results from the first empirical study of eviction settlement negotiations. The study involved rigorous analysis of an original dataset of over one thousand hand-coded settlements, observations of settlement negotiations in the hallways of housing court, and dozens of interviews. The findings demonstrate that unrepresented tenants—who make up the vast majority of tenants in the eviction system—have no meaningful influence over settlement terms. Rather, the terms are set by landlords and their attorneys. Drawing on the empirical findings and scholarship about contracts of adhesion, the Article develops the theoretical concept of “settlements of adhesion.”

Contract Law Contracts Empirical Analysis Housing
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Essay
Volume 92.8
Defending Home: Toward a Theory of Community Equity
Deborah N. Archer
Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Clinical Law, New York University School of Law and President, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

This Essay was written, in part, while Schottenfeld was a lawyer for the NAACP, but it does not necessarily reflect the views of the NAACP. Both of us have worked with or represented members of the Sandridge community and other communities mentioned in this Essay; the views expressed in this Essay are ours alone, but we are deeply grateful for the inspiration and insight we have drawn from these communities and their members. We thank Richard Buery, Devon Carbado, David Chen, Daniel Harawa, and Erika Wilson for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts. We are grateful to Chloe Bartholomew, Suchait Kahlon, Nina McKay, and Briana Thomas for their research assistance; to Kathleen Agno for her ongoing research support; and to Helen Zhao and the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for greatly improving this Essay. We also appreciate the insights received from participants of the Lutie Lytle Black Women Scholarship Workshop. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge support from the Filomen D’Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund, New York University School of Law.

Joseph R. Schottenfeld
Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School and Senior Affiliated Research Scholar, the Community Equity Lab at New York University School of Law.

This Essay was written, in part, while Schottenfeld was a lawyer for the NAACP, but it does not necessarily reflect the views of the NAACP. Both of us have worked with or represented members of the Sandridge community and other communities mentioned in this Essay; the views expressed in this Essay are ours alone, but we are deeply grateful for the inspiration and insight we have drawn from these communities and their members. We thank Richard Buery, Devon Carbado, David Chen, Daniel Harawa, and Erika Wilson for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts. We are grateful to Chloe Bartholomew, Suchait Kahlon, Nina McKay, and Briana Thomas for their research assistance; to Kathleen Agno for her ongoing research support; and to Helen Zhao and the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for greatly improving this Essay. We also appreciate the insights received from participants of the Lutie Lytle Black Women Scholarship Workshop. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge support from the Filomen D’Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund, New York University School of Law.

Historic discrimination in the process of siting and constructing physical infrastructure has sacrificed the Black communities that bear the costs associated with new roads, power lines, and sewage plants while receiving few of the benefits. This Essay advances a "community equity" framework to recognize and protect the sources of value that people hold in their communities. This approach looks beyond the traditional domains of civil rights and land use law. Instead, it embraces analogies in public nuisance and common law torts doctrines as mechanisms for recognizing community harms above and beyond the aggregate of individual claims.

Housing Property Law
2
Essay
77.1
The Steep Costs of Using Noncumulative Zoning to Preserve Land for Urban Manufacturing
Roderick M. Hills, Jr
William T. Comfort, III, Professor of Law, New York University Law School
David Schleicher
Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University Law School

We gratefully acknowledge the research of Jonathan Herczeg, New York University Law School Class of 2008, whose unpublished paper on the history of New York City’s 1961 zoning resolution provided us with valuable background on the politics of New York’s zoning.

Cities Housing Land Use
2
Essay
77.1
Who Should Authorize a Commuter Tax?
Clayton P. Gillette
Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, New York University School of Law

Thanks for comments from participants in the Symposium, Reassessing the State and Local Government Toolkit at The University of Chicago Law School and a faculty workshop at New York University School of Law.

Cities Housing State Law
2
Essay
77.1
Controlling Residential Stakes
Lee Anne Fennell
Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Julie A. Roin
Seymour Logan Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

We thank Amnon Lehavi, Lior Strahilevitz, participants in The University of Chicago Law School’s Symposium, Reassessing the State and Local Government Toolkit, and participants in the 2009 Property Works in Progress conference held at the University of Colorado School of Law for helpful comments and questions on this project. Prisca Kim and Eric Singer provided excellent research assistance.

Cities Housing Property Law
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83.3
Civil Rights in a Desegregating America
Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School.

I am grateful to Brian An, David Armor, David Card, Sheryll Cashin, Erwin Chemerinsky, Chris Elmendorf, Reynolds Farley, Lee Fennell, Jeremy Fiel, Jim Greiner, Matthew Hall, Rick Hasen, Aziz Huq, John Iceland, Ellen Katz, Douglas Massey, Martha Minow, Martha Nussbaum, Rick Pildes, Alex Polikoff, Eric Posner, Sean Reardon, Florence Roisman, Daria Roithmayr, James Ryan, Richard Sander, Robert Schwemm, Stacy Seicshnaydre, Michael Seidman, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Lior Strahilevitz, and David Strauss for their helpful comments. My thanks also to the workshop participants at the University of Chicago, where I presented an earlier version of the Article. I am pleased as well to acknowledge the support of the Robert Helman Law and Public Policy Fund.

I.  Racial Segregation in America

Civil Rights Housing Race Segregation Voting Rights Act

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