178
Souter, J., dissenting
of funds from the pocket of a failing business owner with IOLTA's disposition of funds the client never had or could have received. Neither the equation, nor its relevance to the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of just compensation, is immune to question.
But, however these issues of taking and compensation may someday be adjudicated, two things are clear now: the issues are serious and they might be resolved against respondents. If that should happen, today's holding would stand as an abstract proposition without significance for the application of the Fifth Amendment.
If abstraction were guaranteed to be harmless, of course, an abstract ruling now and again would not matter much, beyond the time spent reaching it. But our law has been wary of abstract legal propositions not only because the common-law tradition is a practical one, but because abstractions pose their own peculiar risks. As The Chief Justice noted in a different but related context, there is a danger in "cutting loose the notion of 'just compensation' from the notion of 'private property.' " Almota Farmers Elevator & Warehouse Co. v. United States, 409 U. S. 470, 486 (1973) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); see also id., at 482-483 ("While the inquiry as to what property interest is taken by the condemnor and the inquiry as to how that property interest shall be valued are not identical ones, they cannot be divorced without seriously undermining a number of rules dealing with the law of eminent domain").
One may wonder here not only whether the theoretical property analysis may skew the resolution of the taking and compensation issues that will follow, but also how far today's holding may unsettle accepted governmental practice elsewhere. By recognizing an abstract property right to interest "actually 'earned' " by a party's principal, ante, at 168, does the Court not raise the possibility of takings challenges whenever the government holds and makes use of the principal of private parties, as it frequently does? When, for
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