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524US1

Unit: $U81

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178

PHILLIPS v. WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION

Souter, J., dissenting

of funds from the pocket of a failing business owner with
IOLTA’s disposition of funds the client never had or could
have received. Neither the equation, nor its relevance to
the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of just compensation, is
immune to question.

But, however these issues of taking and compensation
may someday be adjudicated, two things are clear now: the
issues are serious and they might be resolved against re-
If that should happen, today’s holding would
spondents.
stand as an abstract proposition without signiﬁcance for the
application of the Fifth Amendment.

If abstraction were guaranteed to be harmless, of course,
an abstract ruling now and again would not matter much,
beyond the time spent reaching it. But our law has been
wary of abstract legal propositions not only because the
common-law tradition is a practical one, but because abstrac-
tions pose their own peculiar risks. As The Chief Justice
noted in a different but related context, there is a danger in
“cutting loose the notion of ‘just compensation’ from the
notion of ‘private property.’ ” Almota Farmers Elevator &
Warehouse Co. v. United States, 409 U. S. 470, 486 (1973)
(Rehnquist, J., dissenting); see also id., at 482–483 (“While
the inquiry as to what property interest is taken by the con-
demnor and the inquiry as to how that property interest
shall be valued are not identical ones, they cannot be di-
vorced without seriously undermining a number of rules
dealing with the law of eminent domain”).

One may wonder here not only whether the theoretical
property analysis may skew the resolution of the taking and
compensation issues that will follow, but also how far today’s
holding may unsettle accepted governmental practice else-
where. By recognizing an abstract property right to inter-
est “actually ‘earned’ ” by a party’s principal, ante, at 168,
does the Court not raise the possibility of takings challenges
whenever the government holds and makes use of the prin-
cipal of private parties, as it frequently does? When, for