Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Michael Allan Wolf

Richard E. Nelson Eminent Scholar Chair in Local Government
Professor of Law

CV

SSRN

bepress (SelectedWorks)

Phone:
(352) 273-0934

Expertise

Bill of Rights  • Constitutional History  • Constitutional Law  • Eminent Domain  • Environmental Law  • Fifth Amendment  • Fourteenth Amendment  • Land Use  • Legal History  • Local Government  • Property Law  • Real Estate  • Sustainability  • Takings Clause Jurisprudence  • Urban Revitalization  • Zoning  • 

About

Michael Allan Wolf joined the faculty of the University of Florida Levin College of Law in August, 2003, as the first occupant of the Richard E. Nelson Chair in Local Government Law. In 2019, he was named the Richard E. Nelson Eminent Scholar Chair in Local Government. Professor Wolf has been teaching and writing for more than three decades in the areas of land-use planning, property, local government, constitutional, environmental, and urban revitalization law; and legal and constitutional history. He earned his B.A. degree from Emory University, his J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, and his A.M. (history) and Ph.D. (History of American Civilization) degrees from Harvard University. Professor Wolf, who was Professor of Law and History at the University of Richmond, held his first law teaching appointment at Oklahoma City University and has also served as a visiting professor, first at the University of Richmond, then at American University.

Professor Wolf is the author of Powell on Real Property (17 volumes), the most prominent treatise in the area that is regularly cited by state and federal courts. Other recent books include Land Use Law (with Daniel R. Mandelker, 2015-), The Supreme Court and the Environment: The Reluctant Protector (2012), Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (with Charles M. Haar, 2010), Powell on Real Property: Michael Allan Wolf Desk Edition (a one-volume abridgement of the treatise, 2009), The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (2008), and Strategies for Environmental Success in an Uncertain Judicial Climate (editor and contributor, 2005). His writings have also appeared in a wide variety of law and law-related journals (including the Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Fordham Law Review), many of them contributions to symposia on topics in land-use regulation, environmental law, eminent domain, and regulatory takings. His commentaries have been featured in national newspapers and on National Public Radio.

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University
A.M., Harvard University
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
B.A., Emory University

Teaching and Scholarship

Land-use Planning, Environmental Law, Property, Local Government, Supreme Court and the Environment, Constitutional Law, Urban Revitalization, Legal and Constitutional History

Courses

  • Constitutional Law
  • Land Use Planning and Control
  • U.S. Constitutional History I

Publications

Books

  • Powell on Real Property (17 vols., author, 2019-; gen. ed. 2000-2019) [Link]
  • Land Use Law (6th ed.) (with Daniel R. Mandelker) (LexisNexis, 2015-) [Link]
  • The Supreme Court and the Environment: The Reluctant Protector (CQ Press/Sage, 2012) [Link]
  • Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (with Haar) (Environmental Law Institute, 2010)  [Link]
  • Powell on Real Property: Michael Allan Wolf Desk Edition (Matthew Bender, 2009)
  • Strategies for Environmental Success in an Uncertain Judicial Climate (Environmental Law Institute, 2005) [Link]
  • The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler (University Press of Kansas, 2008) [Link]

Representative Book Chapters

  • “There’s Something Happening Here: Affordable Housing as a Nonstarter in the U.S. Supreme Court”, in Racial Justice in American Land Use (Craig Anthony Arnold et al. eds., Cambridge University Press forthcoming 2022).
  • “Becoming a Legal Troublemaker,” in Law Touched our Hearts: A Generation Remembers Brown v. Board of Education 51 (Mildred W. Robinson & Richard J. Bonnie eds., Vanderbilt University Press, 2009) [Link]
  • “Hysteria v. History: Public Use in the Public Eye,” in Private Property, Community, and Eminent Domain (Robin Paul Malloy ed., Ashgate Publishing, 2008) [Link]
  • “Introduction: A New Realism About Environmental Law,” and “They Endured: Mining the Supreme Court’s Serviceable Past,” in Strategies for Environmental Success in an Uncertain Judicial Climate (Michael Allan Wolf ed., Environmental Law Institute, 2005) [Link]
  • “Leo Frank, Emma Goldman, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.,” in One Hundred Americans Making Constitutional History: A Biographical History(Melvin Urofsky ed., CQ Press, 2004) [Link]

Representative Articles

  • Zoning Reformed, 70 U. Kan. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2021)
  • Check State: Avoiding Preemption by Using Incentives, 36 J. Land Use & Envtl. L. 121 (2021)
  • A Reign of Error: Property Rights and Stare Decisis, 99 Wash. U. L. Rev. 441 (2021) [SSRN]
  • A Common Law of Zoning, 61 Ariz. L. Rev. 771 (2019) [SSRN]
  • Supreme Court Roadblocks to Responsive Coastal Management in the Wake of Lucas, 53 Real Prop., Probate & Trust L.J. 59 (2018) [SSRN]
  • Right Environmentalism: Repurposing Conservative Constitutionalism, 50 Ariz. St. L.J. 651 (2018) [SSRN]
  • Friends in High Places, Planning, July 2018, at 13
  • Lucas at 25, Planning, July 2017, at 10
  • “Climate, Takings, and the U.S. Supreme Court,” Planning, Oct. 2014 at 50
  • Conservation Easements and the “Term Creep” Problem, 2013 Utah L. Rev. 787, 33 Utah Envtl. L. Rev. 101 (2013) [SSRN]
  • The Brooding Omnipresence of Regulatory Takings: Urban Origins and Effects, 40 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1835 (2013). [SSRN]
  • Strategies for Making Sea-level Rise Adaptation Tools “Takings-Proof,” 28 J. Land Use & Envtl. L. 157 (2013). [SSRN]
  • A Yellow Light for “Green Zoning”: Some Words of Caution About Incorporating Green Building Standards into Local Land Use Law, 43 Urb.Lawyer 949 (2011). [SSRN]
  • William Faulkner, Legal Commentator: Humanity and Endurance in Hollywood’s Yoknapatawpha, 77 Miss. L.J. 957 (2008). [SSRN]
  • Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders the “Progressive” Peril (Book Review), 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1233 (2007). [SSRN]
  • Supreme Guidance: Supreme Guidance for Wet Growth: Lessons from the High Court on the Powers and Responsibilities of Local Governments, 9 Chap. L. Rev. 233 (2006) [SSRN]
  • Yes, Thankfully, Euclid Lives, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 771 (with Haar, 2004). [SSRN]
  • Euclid Lives: The Survival of Progressive Jurisprudence, 115 Harv. L. Rev. 2158 (with Haar, 2002).
  • Earning Deference: Reflections on the Merger of Environmental and Land-Use Law, 32 Envtl. L. Rep. 11190 (2002); also published in 20 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 253 (2002).
  • Pondering Palazzolo: Why Do We Continue to Ask the Wrong Questions, 32 Envtl. L. Rep. 10367 (2002)

University of Florida Levin College of Law
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.