Cite as: 505 U. S. 1003 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Nevertheless, our decision in Mahon offered little insight into when, and under what circumstances, a given regulation would be seen as going "too far" for purposes of the Fifth Amendment. In 70-odd years of succeeding "regulatory takings" jurisprudence, we have generally eschewed any " 'set formula' " for determining how far is too far, preferring to "engag[e] in . . . essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries." Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 124 (1978) (quoting Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U. S. 590, 594 (1962)). See Epstein, Takings: Descent and Resurrection, 1987 S. Ct. Rev. 1, 4. We have, however, described at least two discrete categories of regulatory action as compensable without case-specific inquiry into the public interest advanced in support of the restraint. The first encompasses regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical "invasion" of his property. In general (at least with regard to permanent invasions), no matter how minute the intrusion, and no matter how weighty the public purpose behind it, we have required compensation. For example, in Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419 (1982), we determined that New York's law requiring landlords to allow television cable companies to emplace cable facilities in their apartment buildings constituted a taking, id., at 435-440, even though the facilities occupied at most only 11/2 cubic feet of the landlords' property, see id., at 438, n. 16. See also United States v. Causby, 328 U. S. 256, 265, and n. 10 (1946) (physical invasions of airspace); cf. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164 (1979) (imposition of navigational servitude upon private marina).
The second situation in which we have found categorical treatment appropriate is where regulation denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land. See Agins, 447 U. S., at 260; see also Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U. S. 825, 834 (1987); Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470, 495 (1987); Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452
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