Opinion ID: 852597
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: First Principles: Origins of the Fifth Amendment

Text: In the American colonial period, law in the colonies was that the Crown could revoke at will its grant of property. During the Revolution, there was widespread belief in the power of the common good (called republicanism) and in the trust-worthiness of legislatures. The newly independent states adopted constitutions granting nearly plenary power to legislatures. None of the first state constitutions contained provisions for just compensation; indeed, only three included clauses regulating government taking of property. [8] When colonial draftsmen did perceive the need to restrain the seizure of real property, they thought it adequate simply to require that seizure occur only by act of the legislature. [9] It was not until the summer of the Philadelphia constitutional convention that the idea of compensation for taking real property became a part of the national government's political agenda. The Confederation Congress, meeting in New York, placed such a provision in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. [10] By this time, excesses even by the Continental military fomented a discontent that eventually led to the adoption of the Fifth Amendment takings clause. [11] Thus, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states: [N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. U.S. Const. amend. V. The amendment's principal author, James Madison, believed government should take a reverent view toward the property of its citizens by refraining from harming their property in any way. For example, in his Speech Opposing Paper Money before the Virginia Assembly, Madison argued that because paper money depreciates, it affects Rights of property as much as taking away equal value in land. Its use, he added, is like the case of land p[ai]d for down [and] to be convey[e]d in [the] future, [and] of a law permitting conveyance to be satisfied by conveying a part onlyor other land of inferior quality. 9 James Madison, The Papers of James Madison 158-59 (R. Rutland et al. eds., University of Chicago Press 1975) (quoting Madison's Notes for Speech Opposing Paper Money). [12] Like the other framers, Madison intended that the clause apply only to physical seizure of property by the federal government. [13] He also believed the courts could best carry out these broader protections. See 12 James Madison, The Papers of James Madison 206-07 (R. Rutland et al. eds., University Press of Virginia 1979) (speech proposing the Bill of Rights). [14] About halfway through our national history, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that due process under the Fourteenth Amendment requires the states, not just the federal government, to compensate an owner when his or her private property is taken for public use. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 241, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897). [15] A generation later, Justice Holmes' opinion in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 43 S.Ct. 158, 67 L.Ed. 322 (1922), first articulated the notion that government activities short of direct seizure could constitute takings. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually developed a framework for analyzing regulatory takings claims. [16] The modern test states that regulation effects a taking if it deprives an owner of all or substantially all economic or productive use of his or her property. See Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 544 U.S. 528, 538-40, 125 S.Ct. 2074, 161 L.Ed.2d 876 (2005). [17] See also Lucas v. S.C. Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1019 & n. 8, 1030, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 120 L.Ed.2d 798 (1992); Penn Cent. Transp. Co. v. City of New York, 438 U.S. 104, 127, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978). This test focuses on several factors: the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant, the extent to which the regulation interferes with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the character of the government action. Dep't of Natural Res. v. Ind. Coal Council, Inc., 542 N.E.2d 1000, 1003 (Ind.1989); Penn Cent., 438 U.S. at 124, 98 S.Ct. 2646. There is at least one state decision holding that airport noise in the nature of nuisance can constitute a taking. See Thornburg, 233 Or. at 190, 376 P.2d at 105 (A nuisance can be such an invasion of the rights of a possessor as to amount to a taking, in theory at least, any time a possessor is in fact ousted from the enjoyment of his land.). However, the Court of Federal Claims has said that the `great weight' of Federal authority is that a taking occurs only when aircraft are present in the superjacent airspace (meaning the air the owner reasonably occupies for his own use). Branning v. United States, 228 Ct.Cl. 240, 654 F.2d 88, 99 (1981).