After Justice Scalia's passing, the best writers on the Court are Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan. Roberts is at his best in a non-ideological case where he has no need to keep votes or reach some contrived outcome. (Roberts's discussion of Wonder Bread today in the 9-0 Bisonnette case was delightful). Kagan is at her best when she goes full-on snark mode in dissent. She spares no one. After the two-way tie between Roberts and Kagan, I think Justice Barrett has climbed to third place. I always find her writing to be delightful, insightful, and clean. Plus she has the virtue of writing the quickest. I haven't run the numbers, but it seems that her opinions consistently come out shortly after oral argument, which means she circulates quickly and there are few revisions to be made.
Justice Barrett's opinion today in Sheetz v. El Dorado County was golden. I especially appreciated this tight summary of the Court's takings clause jurisprudence:
The Takings Clause's right to just compensation coexists with the States' police power to engage in land-use planning. (Though at times the two seem more like in-laws than soulmates.) While States have substantial authority to regulate land use, see Village of Euclid v. Amber Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365 (1926), the right to compensation is triggered if they "physically appropriat[e]" property or otherwise interfere with the owner's right to exclude others from it, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U. S. 139, 149–152 (2021).That sort of intrusion on property rights is a per se taking. Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419, 426 (1982). Different rules apply to State laws that merely restrict how land is used. A use restriction that is "reasonably necessary to the effectuation of a substantial government purpose" is not a taking unless it saps too much of the property's value or frustrates the owner's investment-backed expectations. Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 123, 127 (1978); see also Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, 1016 (1992) ("[T]he Fifth Amendment is violated when land-use regulation does not substantially advance legitimate state interests or denies an owner economically viable use of his land" (internal quotation marks omitted)).
