Cite as: 524 U. S. 156 (1998)
Souter, J., dissenting
abstraction. Cf. Hooker v. Burr, 194 U. S. 415, 419 (1904) (If a contractual obligation is impaired, but the obligor is "not injured to the extent of a penny thereby, his abstract rights are unimportant"). The significance of the regulatory structure, and the issues of taking and compensation, should therefore be considered today.
Approaching the property issue in conjunction with the two others would, in fact, be entirely faithful to the Fifth Amendment, for as we have repeatedly said its Takings Clause does nothing to bar the government from taking property, but only from taking it without just compensation, see, e. g., First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304, 315 (1987); Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U. S. 172, 194 (1985). It thus makes good sense to consider what is property only in connection with what is a compensable taking, an approach to Fifth Amendment analysis that not only would avoid spending time on what might turn out to be an entirely theoretical matter, but would also reduce the risk of placing such undue emphasis on the existence of a generalized property right as to distort the taking and compensation analyses that necessarily follow before the Fifth Amendment's significance can be known.3
3 For example, with respect to the determination whether government regulation "goes too far" in diminishing the value of a claimant's property, we have repeatedly instructed that a "parcel of property could not first be divided into what was taken and what was left for the purpose of demonstrating the taking of the former to be complete and hence compensable." Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal., 508 U. S. 602, 644 (1993); see also Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 130-131 (1978). With its narrow focus on a party's right to any interest generated by its principal, the Court's opinion might be read (albeit erroneously, in my view) to mean that the accrued interest is the only property right relevant to the question whether IOLTA effects a taking.
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