Zoning—Judicial Enforcement of the Duty to Serve the Regional Welfare in Zoning Decisions—SAVE v. City of Bothell, 89 Wn. 2d 862, 576 P.2d 401 (1978)

Authors

Michael H. Rorick

Abstract

After briefly noting the background of relevant Washington law, Part I of this note analyzes the SAVE court's reasoning to reveal indications of an underlying interventionism in its review of the rezone. Part II assesses the problems of such judicial intervention, first in the exclusionary zoning cases relied upon by the SAVE court for its regional welfare standard, and then in the context of zoning actions with the kind of extralocal environmental impacts presented by SAVE. Finally, arguments favoring increased judicial intervention are presented. The note concludes that there are both practical and doctrinal justifications for heightened judicial scrutiny of environmental impacts in the multijurisdictional setting in cases like SAVE. However, an awareness of the social costs of an overly interventionist judiciary is likely to moderate the intensity of judicial review. From this perspective, the court's result and its opinion in SAVE are approved.

First Page

485

Recommended Citation

Michael H. Rorick, Recent Developments, Zoning—Judicial Enforcement of the Duty to Serve the Regional Welfare in Zoning Decisions—SAVE v. City of Bothell, 89 Wn. 2d 862, 576 P.2d 401 (1978), 55 Wash. L. Rev. 485 (1980).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol55/iss2/10