Cornell Law Review Volume 88 Article 1 Issue 6 September 2003 Takings, Regulations, and Natural Property Rights Eric R. Claeys Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Eric R. Claeys, Takings, Regulations, and Natural Property Rights, 88 Cornell L. Rev. 1549 (2003) Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol88/iss6/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TAKINGS, REGULATIONS, AND NATURAL PROPERTY RIGHTS Eric R. Claeyst This Article reexamines federal regulatory-takings law in light of a line of eminent-domain cases decided in American state courts during the nine- teenth century. These decisions drew on FoundingEra principles of natural law to generate a body of what modern lawyers would call "regulatory tak- ings" law. These principles entitled property owners to the free use of their property. They conceived of a property "regulation" as a positive law order- ing an owner's free use of property to accord with the natural rights of her neighbors. If a positive law restrained the free use of propertyfor some other purpose, it constituted an "invasion" of use rights and therefore "took" con- stitutionally-protected "privateproperty." The Article offers three main lessons. First, the Article explains why modern federal and state regulatory-takings law suffers from serious doctri- nal problems. The nineteenth-century cases fashioned workable doctrinal standards because they consistently followed the principle that the free use of property deserved protection; Penn Central v. City of New York and other leading modern cases respect property's social value inconsistently, if at all. Second, the nineteenth-century cases provide a different way to conceive of property rights. Most modern property theory is strongly utilitarian;the nine- teenth-century cases justified the free use of property as an extension of the moral freedom inherent in being human. Finally, the distinction these cases drew between "regulations" and "invasions of right" provide important in- sights into the original meaning of the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amend- ment to the U.S. Constitution. INTRODUCTION: NATURAL-RIGHT THEORY IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY STATE EMINENT-DOMAIN LAW .................. 1552 A. Regulations and Takings Now ...................... 1552 B. "Regulations" and "Takings" During the Nineteenth C entury ............................................ 1553 C . Im plications ........................................ 1555 t Assistant Professor of Law, St. Louis University. I am especially grateful to Richard Epstein for encouraging me to explore nineteenth-century state regulatory takings case law. I thank Philip Hamburger, Dennis Hutchinson, Daniel Hulsebosch, Christopher Bracey, Nicole Garnett, Scott Kieff, Adam Mossoff, John Nagle, Troy Paredes, and Pete Salsich for useful criticisms or suggestions. I am grateful to the University of Chicago Legal Scholarship workshop, the University of San Diego School of Law, the Kansas University School of Law, and the St. Louis University School of Law for letting me present draft versions of this Article. Thanks to Richard Brumbaugh for his research assistance, and to the St. Louis University School of Law for a research grant and other support. 1549 1550 CORNELL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 88:1549 1. A New and Old Approach to Federal Regulatory Takings Law (or, Clearing the Penn Central M uddle) ......................................... 1555 2. A New and Old Approach to State Regulatory Takings Law .................................... 1558 3. IntroducingEquality and Freedom as Standards in Takings Law .................................... 1559 4. Nineteenth-Century Regulatory Takings Principles and the Original Intent Behind the Takings Clause ...... 1561 D. The Argum ent ...................................... 1565 I. REGULATIONS AND TAKINGS IN NATURAL-RIGHT THEORY ................................................... 1566 A. The Social Compact ................................ 1566 B. Property Rights ..................................... 1568 C . T akings ............................................. 1569 D. Regulations, Invasions of Right, and Regulatory T akings ............................................. 1570 II. REGULATORY TAKINGS DOCTRINE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ..................................................1574 A . O verview ........................................... 1574 B. Public Health and Safety ........................... 1577 C. The Public Morals and Order ...................... 1581 D. The Regulation of Private Property: The Equal Rights of All, or Securing an Average Reciprocity of A dvantage .......................................... 1585 1. Abating Private Nuisances ........................ 1585 2. Securing a Common Benefit to All Affected Owners... 1587 3. Cases of Private Necessity, or Regulating When There Is No Natural Property Right ...................... 1589 4. Invasions of Right ................................ 1591 E. The Protection of Public Property Interests: Public Property and Private Property Affected with a Public In terest ............................................. 1593 1. Public and Private Ownership ..................... 1594 2. "Regulation"of Public Nuisances .................. 1597 3. Equal-Advantage Principles in Public-Nuisance Regulation ....................................... 1599 III. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA: THE TURN TO UTILITARIAN PROPERTY THEORY ........................................ 1604 A. The Demise of the Nineteenth-Century Approach .. 1604 B. Hadacheck v. Sebastian: Regulating Pollution over T im e ............................................... 160 7 1. The Natural-Right Approach....................... 1607 2. The "Coming to the Nuisance" Problem ............. 1608 2003] TAKINGS, REGULATIONS 1551 3. The Centrality of "Freedom of Action" to Property Regulation ....................................... 1609 4. Freedom of Action When a Homeowner Comes to a Nuisance ........................................ 1612 C. The Billboard Cases: Eyesores and the Free and Equal Use of Property .............................. 1615 D. Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, or Natural-Right Principles' Half-Hearted Entrance into Federal Takings Law ........................................ 1618 1. Natural-Right Takings Doctrine .................... 1619 2. Utilitarian Takings Theory ........................ 1621 3. Justice Holmes's UtilitarianDilemma, and Mahon's Ambivalent Legacy ................................ 1625 E. Euclid: Deference in Regulatory Takings Law ....... 1627 1. Euclid's Zoning Scheme ........................... 1627 2. The District Court Opinion: The Distinction Between Police Power and Eminent-Domain Power ........... 1628 3. Pollution Control ................................. 1629 4. Aesthetic Control ................................. 1630 5. Zoning and the Locality Rule ...................... 1631 6. Undeveloped Property ............................. 1632 7. The Supreme Court's Opinion and Its Legacy ........ 1633 F. Miller v. Schoene, Public Necessity, and the Embrace of Utilitarian Property Theory ...................... 1635 1. Cedar Rust Fungus and Other Weed- and Pest- Control Laws .................................... 1636 2. Changing Circumstances in Natural-Right ConstitutionalInterpretation ....................... 1637 3. Regulating Cedar Rust Consistent with Natural-Right Principles........................................ 1638 4. The Supreme Court's Embrace of Utilitarianism and Legal Realism .................................... 1641 5. Miller v. Schoene and the Redundancy of Regulatory Takings with Legislation ................ 1643 IV. Penn Central, Ad Hoc Interest Balancing, and the Takings M uddle ........................................ 1644 A. Penn Central: Completing the Utilitarian Turn ...... 1645 B. Loretto: Regulatory Touchings ....................... 1648 C. Lucas: Total Use Restrictions and the "Denominator" Problem ............................ 1652 D. Palazzolo: Complications with Expectations .......... 1657 E. Tahoe-Sierra, or Conceptual Severance Run Amok ... 1660 1. A Total Restriction for a Temporary Period.......... 1660 2. Land-Use Moratoria Under the Natural-Right Approach ........................................ 1661 1552 CORNELL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 88:1549 3. Faux Formalism .................................. 1664 4. All-or-Nothing DoctrinalPressures .................. 1665 CONCI.USION ................................................... 1669 INTRODUCTION: NATURAL-RIGHT THEORY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY STATE EMINENT-DOMAIN LAW A. Regulations and Takings Now Regulatory takings law combines the worst of two worlds-consti- tutional law's arid generalities and property law's substantive difficul- ties. To hear the Supreme Court tell it, this confusion is the best we can expect. In Penn Central TransportationCo. v. New York City, the lead- ing regulatory takings case of our time, the Supreme Court com- plained that regulatory takings law "has proved to be a problem of considerable difficulty."' "[Qjuite simply," the Court confessed, it "has been unable to develop any 'set formula' for determining" regu- latory takings cases.2 There are many reasons for this problem, but we make it worse