Albert K. Butzel

Albert K. Butzel did everything he could to avoid going to law school. After graduating from Harvard College, Butzel spent a year in Paris trying to become, as he put it, Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. He made a deal with his father, who was an attorney, that he would go to law school if he did not succeed as a fiction writer. About a year later, Butzel enrolled at Harvard Law School.

Having grown up in the rural town of Birmingham, Michigan, Butzel had a natural predilection for the open country that soon turned into an interest in land use law. At Harvard, he took a summer job with Professor Charles Haar, an authority on land use law. Together, they analyzed the zoning regulations of various state governments. (read more…)