Executive Summary

Within the space of a single month last year, the Supreme Court rendered three property rights decisions in swift succession, shattering a body of property rights jurisprudence that finally had begun to make the protections afforded by the Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause meaningful. The three decisions, Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc., San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco, and Kelo v. City of New London, were a substantial setback from nearly two decades' worth of gains in property rights jurisprudence during the Rehnquist era. Although the numerous protections afforded private property in the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause, would appear to place protection of private property on a par with other constitutional rights, throughout much of the nation's history, the Supreme Court has treated property rights as though they were a "poor relation" to other constitutionally protected rights. Inroads to greater protection for property rights were made in the last two decades; however, each of the three property rights decisions of the last Term had a negative effect on those inroads. . . .

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