Item B: Ordinance Concerning Goal 5 Natural Resources Study

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2904 112 SUPREME COURT REPORTER 505 U.s. 1035 were enacted without a detennination that they were in accord with the owner's reason- able expectations and therefore sufficient to support a severe restriction on specific par- cels of property. See 304 S.C. 376, 383, 404 S.E.2d 896, 899 (1991). The promotion of tourism, for instance, ought not to suffice to deprive specific property of all value without a" corresponding duty to compensate. Fur- thermore, the means, as well as the ends, of regulation must accord with the owner's rea- sonable expectations~ Here, the State did not act until after the property had been zoned for individua!.lJ.Q36lot development and most other parcels had been improved, throwing the whole burden of the regulation on the remaining lots. This too must be measured in the balance. See Pennsylvania Coal Co. 1/. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416, 43. S.Ct. Hi8, 160, 67 L.Ed. 322 (1922). With these observations, I concur in the judgment of the Court. Justice BL,ACKMUN, dissenting. Today the Court launches a missile to kill a mouse. The State of South Carolina prohibited petitioner Lucas from building a pennanent structure on his property from 1988 to 1990. Relying on an unreviewed (and implausible) state trial court finding that this restriction left LUC88' property valueless, this Court granted review to determine whether com- pensation must be paid in cases where the State prohibits all economic use of real es- tate. According to the Court, such an occa- sion never has arisen in any of our prior eases, and the Court imagines that it will arise "relatively rarely" or only in "extraordi- nary circumstances." Almost certainly it did not happen in this case. 1. The country has come to recognize that uncon- trolled beachfront development can cause serious damage to life and property. See Brief for Sier- ra Club et aI. as Amici Curiae 2-5. Hurricane Hugo's September 1989 attack upon South Car- olina's coastline, for example, caused 29 deaths and approximately $6 billion in property dam. Nonetheless, the" Court presses on to de- cide the issue, and as it does, it ignores its jurisdictional limits, remakes its traditional rules of review, and creates simultaneously a new categorical rule and an exception (nei- ther of which is rooted in our prior case law, common law, or common sense). I protest not only the Court's decision, but each step taken to reach it. More fundamentally, I question the Court's wisdom in issuing sweeping new rules to decide such a narrow case. Surely, as Justice KENNEDY demon- strates, the Court could have reached the result it wanted without inflicting this dam- age upon our Takings Clause jurisprudence. My fear is that the Court's new policies will spread beyond the narrow confines of the present ease. For that reason, I, like the Court, will give far greater attention to this case than its narrow scope suggests-not because I can intercePllimtbe Court's mis- sile, or save the targeted mouse, but because I hope perhaps to limit the collateral damage. I A In 1972 Congress passed the Coastal Zone Management Act. 16 U.S.C. ~ 1451 et 8eq. The Act was designed to provide States with money and incentives to carry out Congress' goal of protecting the public from shoreline erosion and coastal hazards. In the 1980 amendments to the Act, Congress directed States to enhance their coastal programs by "[p]reventing or significantly reducing threats to life and the destruction of property by eliminating development and redevelop- ment in high-hazard areas." 1 16 U.S.C. ~ 1456b(a)(2) (1988 ed., Supp. II). age, much of it the result of uncontrolled beach- front development. See Zalkin, Shifting Sands and Shiftir.g Doctrines: The Supreme Court's Changing Takings Doctrine and South Carolina's Coastal Zone Statute, 79 Calif.L.Rev. 205, 212- 213 (1991). The beachfront buildings are not only themselves destroyed in such a storm, "but