Lucas made deprivation of all economic value a per se taking absent background principles

Evidence

In 1992, the Court in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), ruled in favor of a landowner who claimed that environmental restrictions on his use of coastal property without compensation amounted to an unconstitutional taking. It was not so much the result in that particular case as the Court’s reasoning that called into question environmental restrictions.TheCourtinLucasheldthatlanduserestrictionsthatdeprived land of all economic value or beneficial use amounted to per se takings unless the restrictions at issue did no more than codify what otherwise amounted to long-standing “background principles” of law. The Court’s willingness to embrace economic value as the determinative touchstone of a law’s constitutionality was troubling because it seemed to accept too easily the precept that the economically profitable exploitation of a natural resource is somehow constitutionally guaranteed or at least preferable. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 592