Abstract
The Supreme Court is set to decide a case requesting reconsideration of a doctrine that has long bedeviled constitutional litigants and commentators. The case is Knick v. Township of Scott, and the doctrine is the "ripeness" rule from Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank that plaint~ffs seeking to raise takings claims under the Fifth Amendment must pursue state-created remedies first- the so-called "compensation prong" (as distinguished from a separate "takings prong"). This Essay argues that to put the compensation prong in the best light possible, the Court should view the requirement as a "prudential" rule rather than (as it has previously done) a constitutional one. It then argues that the Court should reject this doctrine not because it is a prudential rule, which would follow a larger trend in recent case discussions, but because it is a bad prudential rule. This path is the prudential one because casting doubt on prudential rules more generally could cause a significant set of additional doctrines to suffer unintended and unwelcome consequences.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2018
Publication Information
117 Michigan Law Review Online 39-54 (2018)
Repository Citation
Crocker, Katherine Mims, "A Prudential Take on a Prudential Takings Doctrine" (2018). Faculty Publications. 1913.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1913
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons