If you were creating a moot court problem, what topic would you pick? You’d want a question that is a hot topic. Unresolved by the Supreme Court. Controversial, interesting, and complex.

Well, we have just the issue for you: our favorite topic, takings.

That appears to be what the powers-that-be behind Harvard Law School’s moot court competition believed, because according to this report (Rachel Reed, “Harvard Law students battle for honors at the 2025 Ames Moot Court Competition,” Harvard Law Today (Nov. 19, 2025)), the student teams were confronted with a case where there was a clear taking (the commandeering and take-over of a hand sanitizer plant during Co-19), but the plant owner was denied a remedy because the defendant is the (fictional) State of Ames.

Ah yes, the question the Court dodged recently in DeVillier v. Texas, 601 U.S. 285 (2024): may an owner whose property has been taken by a state sue for just compensation in a federal court directly under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, or is the lawsuit barred by the Eleventh Amendment? As the article described the case:

The fictional scenario centered on Daniel Welles, a businessman in the equally fictitious state of Ames. During the COVID-19 pandemic and after the federal government declared a public health emergency, Welles’s hand sanitizer manufacturing plant was commandeered by Ames to address a dire supply shortage. Although the factory was returned to Welles after the emergency ended, he received no compensation for its use, and Ames does not provide a legal avenue to sue when the state takes private property. Hoping to recoup some of his losses, Welles sued Ames directly under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause — echoing the issues raised by a real Supreme Court case from last term, Devillier v. Texas.

Check out the article for how the students argued the case before a panel of real-life judges and Supreme Court experts. The students arguing for the government argued the slippery slope, and that the courts should not imply causes of action lightly. Those arguing for the property owners asserted that the just compensation remedy is in the Constitution, so doesn’t need Congress to create a statutory cause of action. (In other words, the very same arguments made in DeVillier, but not resolved by the Court.)

We urge you to read the entire article, which details the arguments made.

We’re glad that the students are addressing a property rights issue. We suspect they don’t get much of this elsewhere in the curriculum.

We also think that this issue being selected as the moot court problem is a clear sign that this is among the property rights issues that indeed remain hot topics, unresolved by the Supreme Court. And controversial, interesting, and complex.

Stay tuned for the real case, coming soon.