The following article is Dean Treanor’s portion of a debate with Professor Richard Epstein during an event on regulatory takings at the Fordham University School of Law moderated by Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. We carried Prof. Epstein’s remarks in the last edition of Engage, available here: http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/the-spurious-constitutional-distinction-between-takings-and-regulation.

I would like to start by talking about what the original understanding of the regulatory takings doctrine was, which I think was the first question that Judge Preska asked. The original understanding is, very simply, that there is no regulatory takings doctrine...