The Takings Clause states: "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Until the late 19 th century, this clause was applied by the Supreme Court only to condemnation : the formal exercise by government of its eminent domain power to take property coercively, upon payment of just compensation to the property owner. When the sovereign appropriated or caused a physical invasion of property, as when a government dam flooded private land, the Court found that the property had been taken just as surely as if the sovereign had formally condemned. In 1922, in the most historically important taking decision, the Supreme Court extended the availability of takings actions from government appropriations and physical invasions of property, as described above, to the mere regulation of property use. The ascendancy of the regulatory taking concept since the 1970s is hardly surprising. The pendulum may yet be swinging again: the four takings cases decided by the Court during its 2012-2013 and 2014-2015 terms were all decided in favor of the property owner, though mostly as to narrow issues. * * * * *
This report compiles only Supreme Court decisions addressing issues with special relevance to takings (inverse condemnation) actions, not those on formal condemnation or property valuation. On the other hand, a scattering of substantive due process decisions is interspersed where they have been cited by the Court as authority in its takings decisions. In Lingle , the Court summed up the four types of takings claims it now recognizes, in addition to those based on outright government appropriations:
a plaintiff seeking to challenge a government regulation as an uncompensated taking of private property may ... alleg[e] a "physical" taking, a Lucas -type "total regulatory taking," a Penn Central taking, or a land-use exaction violating the standards set forth in Nollan and Dolan . The Dawn of Regulatory Takings Law: Pennsylvania Coal Co. (1922) to 1978

The principle that government may "take" property in the Fifth Amendment sense merely through regulatory restriction of property use—that is, without physical invasion or formal appropriation of the property—was announced in 1922. Aside from making clear that regulatory takings occur only with the most severe of property impacts, the Court's opinions during this period display little in the way of principled decision-making. Appropriations and Physical Takings Only: 1870 to 1922

The 1870s marked the Supreme Court's first clear acknowledgment that the Takings Clause is not only a constraint on the government's formal exercise of eminent domain, but the basis as well for suits by property owners challenging government conduct not attended by such formal exercise. were typical. When cases involving mere restrictions on the use of property reached the Court, they were tested under due process, scope of the police power, or ultra vires theories.
This report is a reverse chronological listing of U.S. Supreme Court decisions addressing claims that a government entity has "taken" private property, as that term is used in the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Takings Clause states: "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." A scattering of related, substantive due process decisions is also included.
Under the Takings Clause, courts allow two distinct types of suit. Condemnation (also "formal condemnation") occurs when a government or private entity formally invokes its power of eminent domain by filing suit to take a specified property, upon payment to the owner of just compensation. By contrast, a taking action is a suit by a property holder against the government, claiming that government conduct has effectively taken the property notwithstanding that the government has not filed a formal condemnation suit. Because it is the procedural reverse of a condemnation action, a taking action is often called an "inverse condemnation" action. A typical taking action complains of severe regulation of land use, though the Takings Clause reaches all species of property, real and personal, tangible and intangible. The taking action generally demands that the government compensate the property owner, just as when government formally exercises eminent domain.
Finding the line between government interferences with property that are takings and those that are not has occupied the Supreme Court in most of the 100-plus decisions compiled here. The Supreme Court's decisions in these takings actions reach back to 1870, and are divided in this report into three periods.
The modern period, 1978 to the present, has seen the Court settle into a taxonomy of four fundamental types of takings—total regulatory takings, partial regulatory takings, physical takings, and exaction takings. The Court in this period also has sought to develop criteria for these four types, and to set out ripeness standards and clarify the required remedy. In the preceding period, 1922 to 1978, the Court first announced the regulatory taking concept—the notion that government regulation alone, without appropriation or physical invasion of property, may be a taking if sufficiently severe. During this time, however, it proffered little by way of regulatory takings criteria, continuing rather its earlier focus on appropriations and physical occupations. In the earliest period of takings law, 1870 to 1922, the Court saw the Takings Clause as protecting property owners only from appropriations and physical invasions, two forms of government interference with property seen by the Court as most functionally similar to an outright condemnation of property. During this infancy of takings law, regulatory restrictions were tested under other, non-takings theories, such as whether they were within a state's police power, and were generally upheld.
The four takings cases decided by the Supreme Court during its 2012-2013 and 2014-2015 terms attest to the Court's continuing interest in the takings issue.