By Beck Reiferson — Political philosophers have long regarded the right to property as one of man’s most essential rights. John Locke, whose writings were among the most influential on the political thought of America’s Framers, believed the primary purpose of governments is to protect its citizens’ property rights. In his Two Treatises of Government, he argued that the “great and chief end… of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.” The Framers agreed that protections of property rights were of paramount importance, as the pervasiveness of precisely such protections throughout the Constitution makes clear. Among the Constitution’s explicit protections of Americans’ property rights is the Fifth Amendment, which says that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Known as the Takings Clause, this clause lays out the proper scope of the federal government’s eminent domain power: it may seize private property, but only if it justly compensates the property-owner and the property will serve a public use. The public use requirement—called the Public Use Clause—is central to Takings Clause jurisprudence. I will argue, however, that through its rulings in Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff and Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court has whittled away at Americans’ property rights by erroneously contorting the Public Use Clause into a “Public Utility Clause.” …