Below is the abstract for “Takings Property and Appropriative Water Rights,” available for download on SSRN.

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”1 While courts and academics have put considerable amounts of effort into discussing the meaning of “taken” or “public use,” they have given far less attention to the phrase “private property.” Notable scholars have provided a set of definitions and frameworks to determine when a particular right qualifies as takings property. However, courts and commentators have yet to define the types of rights that are entitled to constitutional protection with sufficient precision to avoid an inconsistent and inefficient application of the Takings Clause.

This Article argues that, while these definitions of takings property lead to sound and consistent outcomes when applied to traditional rights such as a fee simple absolute or an easement, they produce underwhelming results when tested against less conventional interests. The Article assesses how these frameworks perform with a property interest as elusive as appropriative water rights and provides broader lessons about both takings property and water law. First, it becomes apparent that the existing literature and court opinions have unreasonably sanctified rights in land while decrying other types of interests as non-property by applying inconsistent standards. Second, the analysis of these existing frameworks reveals some critical shortcomings in their design that had not yet been described. To address these issues, this Article proposes a solution that harmonizes some of the central components of existing takings property definitions.