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. Theshorter they are, and the more common their language, the moredifficult the task of their interpretation. Private property, forexample, is not just a two-word phrase, but it represents an entireworld view, which necessarily needs to be distilled from sourcesexternal to the text. Takings, public use and just compensation arealso terms that come easily off the tongue, but are hard to explicatein any coherent fashion. In the next few blog posts I shall workthrough 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 meoutside the mainstream of both the political left and right.
Read the full post and comments here. Related video from the Cato Institute here.