Government Takings of Private Property

This chapter discusses the conflict between the public's expectations about the circumstances under which government should be permitted to exercise its power of eminent domain to effect an outright taking of private property, on the one hand, and the U.S. Supreme Court's Fifth Amendment "public use" jurisprudence, on the other. It focuses largely on outright takings in which the government forces the sale of private property-a situation that usually arises when the government feels it necessary to assemble parcels that have a particular configuration. To prevent private property owners from refusing to sell or from holding out for an unreasonably high price, the government can exercise its power of eminent domain to force the sale of the land and go forward with the project.