Regulatory Takings Redux and the Compensation Issue

Abstract

Commencing with the U.S. Supreme Court's famous decision in Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), the federal courts have wrestled with the application of the Constitution's Fifth (and Fourteenth) Amendment to regulations that adversely affect the use of land. During a half-century when the Court heard no land use cases of substance, state supreme courts slowly managed to distinguish away much of the decision's chilling effect upon land use regulation and continue the regulation of land use approved by the Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Corp. ¹