The Fifth Amendment says the government can’t take your property for public use without paying you for it. It doesn’t say the government can’t destroy your property’s value, a very different thing. That distinction has cost property owners billions of dollars they’ll never recover.

James Madison wrote that government is instituted to protect property of every sort. The Founders were precise. The takings clause was a specific protection against a specific abuse: the seizure or destruction of private property without compensation. What they couldn’t fully anticipate was the regulatory state, the apparatus of permits, environmental reviews, coastal commissions, and zoning boards that can accomplish through administrative action what a physical taking would require a check to cover.