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Course Learning Objectives

The department has approved official course learning objectives for this course. Learning objectives support the overall goal of each course and describe what information students should know, or what skills students should have learned by the end of the course.

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

1. Describe the Constitutional principals underpinning California’s land use, general plan, and zoning law.
2. Describe how CEQA functions and its relationship to California’s state and local land use regulations.
3. Describe the rights of property owners and developers in legal land-use disputes involving property owners opposing government entities, as well as in cases of legal disputes between private property owners.
4. Describe the law of entitlements and the difference between legislative and quasi-judicial decision making in the land use law.
5. Describe the law of takings and how to draft land use ordinances without implicating the forth amendment.
6. Describe how to use the principle of stare decisis and case law in developing and interpreting California land use law.
7. Describe the basic land-use litigation procedure in California. 
8. Apply land use law from the perspectives of the regulator, the proponent, and the opponent.
9. Identify the social, political, ethical and cultural concerns that inform interpretation and implementation of land use and planning laws.
10. Develop legally cognizable solutions to land-use planning scenarios using the following procedure:
    • Identify the pertinent facts needed to perform cogent legal analysis of the planning scenario in question.
    • Identify the specific legal ambiguities/issues that must be resolved in order to perform cogent legal analysis of the planning scenario in question.
    • Identity the specific rules of law that are implicated by the planning scenario in question.
    • Apply the appropriate laws to the facts of the situation, to derive a legally defensible outcome.
11. Develop land use decisions that correctly follow legal requirements, so that the decision will withstand judicial and administrative challenge.
12. Explain complex legal analysis, in writing, so that it is easily comprehensible to members of the public.
13. Describe the difference between legal analysis and policy analysis, as well as the importance of the distinction.