The Takings Clause of the 5th amendment to the U.S. Constitution has emerged as the principal means of protecting private property from governmental interference, regulation, and takings. Dealing with the post-Civil War history and interpretation of regulatory takings law as applied to land use cases, the author takes a critical look at the Supreme Court's standards for evaluating land use cases. Takings Law and the Supreme Court uses an interdisciplinary approach to evaluate utilitarian, postmodernist, moral, environmental and common law, formalist, liberal, as well as conservative efforts to understand the taking of private property.