Lucas: No Bright Line

Like pornography, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that it would know a regulatory taking on sight. When it first sighted Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council at a distance last fall, the Court may have thought it had found such a case. By the time the long awaited ruling appeared on June 29, this earlier clear vision appears to have been somewhat impaired. On a 6 to 3 vote, the court wrote a prescription for the state courts to fill and sent the case back to South Carolina for a new examination.