This volume reviews case law and literature on takings, provides a theoretical analysis of the subject and discusses its applications to environmental protection and resource use.

"Summary of federal court regulatory takings jurisprudence ripeness under Williams County, the principal feature of Knick, the exceptions to total taking: nuisance and background principles of a state's law of property"--

The 5th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without paying the owner just compensation. Some owners allege that the gov't's. regulations have effectively taken their property -- by restructuring the ways in which they can use it -- & that they should be compensated. Chapters: regulatory takings: the status " increasing access to compensation; increasing access to fed. courts & encouraging settlements; augmenting requirements for agency takings analyses; paying compensation awards from agency budgets; estimating the cost of expanding eligibility for compensation. Charts & tables.

If legal scholar Richard Epstein is right, then the New Deal is wrong, if not unconstitutional. Epstein reaches this sweeping conclusion after making a detailed analysis of the eminent domain, or takings, clause of the Constitution, which states that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. In contrast to the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the eminent domain clause has been interpreted narrowly. It has been invoked to force the government to compensate a citizen when his land is taken to build a post office, but not when its value is diminished by a comprehensive zoning ordinance. Epstein argues that this narrow interpretation is inconsistent with the language of the takings clause and the political theory that animates it. He develops a coherent normative theory that permits us to distinguish between permissible takings for public use and impermissible ones. He then examines a wide range of government regulations and taxes under a single comprehensive theory. He asks four questions: What constitutes a taking of private property? When is that taking justified without compensation under the police power? When is a taking for public use? And when is a taking compensated, in cash or in kind? Zoning, rent control, progressive and special taxes, workers’ compensation, and bankruptcy are only a few of the programs analyzed within this framework. Epstein’s theory casts doubt upon the established view today that the redistribution of wealth is a proper function of government. Throughout the book he uses recent developments in law and economics and the theory of collective choice to find in the eminent domain clause a theory of political obligation that he claims is superior to any of its modern rivals.

This law school study aid contains the history and cases related to the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution. The authors bring their long-time teaching experience to this important area.

This landmark work is the first book-length treatment of "regulatory taking" the controversial legal concept that governmental regulation of private property use can amount to a "taking" that requires compensation. Since a series of U.S. Supreme Court holdings in 1987, courts increasingly have given serious consideration to a rapidly expanding body of such claims. Yet, until now, there has been no detailed analysis of this clash between an expanding scope of land use regulations & the increased assertiveness of property owners. Comprehensive in scope, Regulatory Takings covers such diverse topics as: wetlands regulations; exactions on development; free speech rights in shopping malls & other private property; the Endangered Species Act; "exclusionary" zoning; asset seizures; rent controls.