In a few minutes I'm going to tell us a story and we're going to play a
game, involving property, before we look at the
cases I asked you to read for today.
But before we do even those
two things, the game and the story, I want to give us a little bit of
orientation to how important property law is considered
Through the lines of other bodies of law.
For example, in the United States Constitution, in the
5th and 14th Amendments, the so-called Due Process Clause.
The drafter of the constitution made it clear that
our government cannot deprive anyone of life, liberty or property
without due process of law.
Put another way, property was one of those
things that are so important to free people
that they needed protection from the state and
were given some in the due process clause.
Due process of course means procedural due process.
The government has to go through certain steps before
it deprives us of any of those three things.
But there's also an element of substantive due process.
That there might be
some governmental intrusion into these interests so severe that
in its own right it needs to be struck down.
Yet last week when we looked at the village of Euclid zoning
case the court rejected the argument that property rights are so absolute.
That they cannot be constrained by the greater power of
a local government to adopt zoning rules for the public good.