Real Estate & Property Law

Epstein Blogs His New Takings Book

By rht

In a post at PrawfsBlawg, "Takings, a Second Time," University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein discusses his new book Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property, a follow-up to Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (1985):

There is a sneaky character of great constitutional provisions. The shorter they are, and the more common their language, the more difficult the task of their interpretation. Private property, for example, is not just a two-word phrase, but it represents an entire world view, which necessarily needs to be distilled from sources external to the text. Takings, public use and just compensation are also terms that come easily off the tongue, but are hard to explicate in any coherent fashion. In the next few blog posts I shall work through some of the key arguments on these issues. But for the moment, I will just note that I am quite proud that my own views leave me outside the mainstream of both the political left and right.

Read the full post and comments here.

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).