just compensation
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 317 U.S. 369 - United States v. Miller · 1943Most cited · 2,772 citing opinions
Such compensation means the full and perfect equivalent in money of the property taken. The owner is to be put in as good position pecuniarily as he would have occupied if his property had not been taken.
How the Supreme Court has restated “just compensation”
Each Supreme Court definition of “just compensation,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “just compensation”
Court decisions citing the 27 opinions that defined “just compensation” — 15,870 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 30 definitions, chronological · 1910–1973
- ORIGINAL
the Constitution does not require a disregard of the mode of ownership,—of the state of the title. It does not require a parcel of land to be valued as an unencumbered whole when it is not held as an unencumbered whole. It merely requires that an owner of property taken should be paid for what is taken from him. It deals with persons, not with tracts of land. And the question is, What has the owner lost? not, What has the taker gained?
what the owner has lost
Whenever there has been an actual physical taking of a part of a distinct tract of land, the compensation to be awarded includes not only the market value of that part of the tract appropriated, but the damage to the remainder resulting from that taking, embracing, of course, injury due to the use to which the part appropriated is to be devoted.
taking of part of a parcel
What the owner is entitled to is the value of the property taken, and that means what it fairly may be believed that a purchaser in fair market conditions would have given for it in fact,—not what a tribunal at a later date may think a purchaser would have been wise to give, nor a proportion of the advance due to its union with other lots. The city is not to be made to pay for any part of what it has added to the land by thus uniting it with other lots, if that union would not have been practicable or have been attempted except by the intervention of eminent domain.
value to owner
the value of the land taken and the damages inflicted by the taking—such a sum as would put him in as good a position pecuniarily as he would have been if his property had not been taken
The special value of land due to its adaptability for use in a particular business is an element which the owner of land is entitled, under the Fifth Amendment, to have considered in determining the amount to be paid as the just compensation upon a taking by eminent domain.
where private property is taken for public use, and there is a market price prevailing at the time and place of the taking, that price is just compensation
It must be determined whether the rates complained of are yielding and will yield, over and above the amounts required to pay taxes and proper operating charges, a sum sufficient to constitute just compensation for the use of the property employed to furnish the service; that is, a reasonable rate of return on the value of the property at the time of the investigation and for a reasonable time in the immediate future.
Just compensation for canceling the contract requires that the contractor shall be made whole and recover the expenditures necessary to perform the contract.
The government's obligation is to put the owners in as good position pecuniarily as if the use of their property had not been taken. They are entitled to have the full equivalent of the value of such use at the time of the taking paid contemporaneously with the taking.
Attorneys' fees and expenses are not embraced within just compensation for land taken by eminent domain.
Whether the contract requisitioned or canceled be one with the government or one between private individuals, the person whose property rights are taken or destroyed is entitled to receive just compensation, not damages as for a breach. A sufficient ground for the distinction lies in the fact that in the one case the requisition or cancellation is a lawful act under the power of eminent domain, while in the other the act constituting the breach is unlawful.
Whether the contract taken or canceled is one with the government or is a private contract, the result of the two cases is that just compensation means the same; 'the value of the contract at the time of its cancellation, not what it would have produced by way of profits * * * if it had been fully performed.
The concept of just compensation is comprehensive, and includes all elements, 'and no specific command to include interest is necessary when interest or its equivalent is a part of such compensation.' The owner is not limited to the value of the property at the time of the taking; 'he is entitled to such addition as will produce the full equivalent of that value paid contemporaneously with the taking.
Just compensation includes all elements of value that inhere in the property, but it does not exceed market value fairly determined. The sum required to be paid the owner does not depend upon the uses to which he has devoted his land but is to be arrived at upon just consideration of all the uses for which it is suitable.
the just compensation to be awarded now should not be confined to the value of the lands at the time of the taking but should include such addition thereto as may be required to produce the present full equivalent of that value paid contemporaneously with the taking.
The established rule is that the taking of property by the United States in the exertion of its power of eminent domain implies a promise to pay just compensation, i.e., value at the time of the taking plus an amount sufficient to produce the full equivalent of that value paid contemporaneously with the taking.
The compensation to be paid is the value of the interest taken. Only in the sense that he is to receive such value is it true that the owner must be put in as good position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken. In the ordinary case, for want of a better standard, market value, so-called, is the criterion of that value.
Just compensation is the value of the interest taken. This is not the value to the owner for his particular purposes or to the condemnor for some special use but a so-called 'market value.' Since 'market value' does not fluctuate with the needs of condemnor or condemnee but with general demand for the property, evidence of loss of profits, damage to good will, the expense of relocation and other such consequential losses are refused in federal condemnation proceedings.
Just compensation' in the constitutional sense, has been held, absent a settlement between the parties, to be fair market value at the time of taking plus 'interest' from that date to the date of payment.
Where the United States takes property under its power of eminent domain, the Fifth Amendment's reference to 'just compensation' entitles the property owner to receive interest from the date of the taking to the date of payment as a part of his just compensation.
In the absence of constitutional connotations, 'just compensation' is not a term of art so far as interest is concerned. The inclusion or exclusion of interest depends upon other contractual provisions, the intention of the parties and the circumstances surrounding the use of the term.
contractual
The Court in its construction of the constitutional provision has been careful not to reduce the concept of 'just compensation' to a formula. The political ethics reflected in the Fifth Amendment reject confiscation as a measure of justice. But the Amendment does not contain any definite standards of fairness by which the measure of 'just compensation' is to be determined.
The value compensable under the Fifth Amendment, therefore, is only that value which is capable of transfer from owner to owner and thus of exchange for some equivalent. Its measure is the amount of that equivalent.
compensable value
The balance between the public's need and the claimant's loss has been struck, in most cases, by awarding the claimant the monetary 'market value' of the property taken. Usually that is a practical standard; usually that approaches the 'just' compensation demanded by the Fifth Amendment.
Fair market value has normally been accepted as a just standard. But when market value has been too difficult to find, or when its application would result in manifest injustice to owner or public, courts have fashioned and applied other standards.
the actual measure of compensation payable for the flowage easement is the value of the easement to its owner. 'The question is, What has the owner lost? not, What has the taker gained?
flowage easement
He is entitled to be put in as good a position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken. He must be made whole but is not entitled to more.
just compensation' means the full monetary equivalent of the property taken. The owner is to be put in the same position monetarily as he would have occupied if his property had not been taken.
just compensation' means the full monetary equivalent of the property taken. The owner is to be put in the same position monetarily as he would have occupied if his property had not been taken.