State Property Rights Laws: Recent Impacts and Future Implications

Abstract

During the 1990s, the frenzied pace at which state legislatures considered and adopted property rights laws prompted a great deal of scrutiny. Early analyses of these takings laws anticipated a range of impacts. Their proponents suggested that such laws were a necessary step to protect the average landowner, the “little guy,” from the excesses of government regulation Critics, however, including many planners, warned of negative impacts such as huge fiscal and administrative burdens on state agencies and a “chilling effect” on local land-use planning activities.