This is the Katorry Daily Podcast for Friday, February 11, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When the government engages in a taking, it's often more subtle, more complicated

than simply seizing a piece of property.

Sam Spiegelman discusses why Cato filed a friend of the court brief in the case of Idaker v United

States and the implications the case might hold for federal takings in the future.

The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,

what is our modern understanding of that based on the text of it and Supreme Court precedent?

There is a something of a consensus, the consensus among academics, though you wouldn't hear it from judges, is that it's a, that it's a complete mess, at least in how the courts and the Supreme Court especially have distilled it.

But we understand it to cover a lot more than just taking someone's property, a lot more than, you know, walking

onto someone's property and giving them a court order saying, this is ours now, here's

how much we're paying you for.

Mr. Idaker suddenly found discovered that his land to be used for farming was not to be used

for that purpose is Is that right?

Exactly. Because thanks to a change in policy from the Army Corps of Engineers, there was going to be a lot more flooding.

And he discovered that by there being a lot more flooding.

And so that changed his expectation with respect to the value of the farmland and so he believes that he is entitled

under the Fifth Amendment to what?

So under the Fifth Amendment he's entitled to compensation for loss of use for the crops that for the crops that were lost for the crops that he then couldn't

grow you know when you have farmlands and it's flooded more regularly and more intensely than for decades previously,

that adds up.

And for all the original plaintiffs,

...