Land use, zoning guide published

An updated edition of “Zoning Handbook for Municipal Officials” has been written by Ronald S. Cope of Ungaretti & Harris, Chicago, and published by the Illinois Municipal League.

Last issued in 2005, the handbook answers zoning questions most frequently asked by public officials in Illinois. It also addresses new developments in zoning law.

Among them are conducting hearing under the Klaeren ruling; determining validity of zoning classifications; the effect of the Civil Rights Act, and constitutional views on “taking.”

New sections are included on home occupations, cellular towers, and procedures to be followed on zoning hearings, affordable housing, basic annexation and financing.

Cope, who chairs the law firm’s Land Use and Zoning Departments, was a speaker during the Municipal League’s 95th annual conference last month in Chicago.

Chicago-Kent prize awarded to author

“Bad Advice: The President’s Lawyers in the War on Terrorism,” a work by Harold H. Bruff that will be published next year by the University Press of Kansas, has been awarded a $10,000 prize by the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

The 2008 Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize recognizes scholarship on the tension between civil liberties and national security in contemporary society. It is funded by a $1 million gift from attorney Roy Palmer, a 1962 graduate, and his wife.

Bruff, the Charles Inglis Thomson Professor and former dean of the University of Colorado Law School, is a former senior attorney and advisor for the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice.

His prize-winning work presents a political and historical analysis of the complex relationship among U.S. presidents and their legal advisors, especially in times of crisis. He includes the claims of unilateral executive power made by President Bush after Sept. 11, 2001.

Bruff will discuss his writing at Chicago-Kent during the coming year.