Cite as: 524 U. S. 156 (1998)
Breyer, J., dissenting
that (because of pre-existing federal law) the client's principal could not generate interest without IOLTA intervention. That is to say, the client could not have had an expectation of receiving interest without that intervention. Nor can one say that IOLTA rules excluded, or prevented, the client's use of his principal to generate interest that would otherwise be his. Under these circumstances, what is the property right of the client that IOLTA could have "confiscat[ed]"? Ante, at 167.
The most that Texas law here could have taken from the client is not a right to use his principal to create a benefit (for he had no such right), but the client's right to keep the client's principal sterile, a right to prevent the principal from being put to productive use by others. Cf. National Bd. of YMCA v. United States, 395 U. S. 85, 92-93 (1969) (noting that government deprivation of property requiring compensation normally takes from an owner use that the owner may otherwise make of the property). And whatever this Court's cases may have said about the constitutional status of such a right, they have not said that the Constitution forces a State to confer, upon the owner of property that cannot produce anything of value for him, ownership of the fruits of that property should that property be rendered fertile through the government's lawful intervention. Cf., e. g., United States ex rel. TVA v. Powelson, 319 U. S. 266, 276 (1943) (no need to pay for value that the "power of eminent domain" itself creates); City of New York v. Sage, 239 U. S. 57, 61 (1915) (city need not pay for value added by unifying parcels where unification impracticable absent eminent domain); United States v. Twin City Power Co., 350 U. S. 222, 228 (1956) (to require payment for value created by government "would be to create private claims in the public domain"). Thus the question is whether "interest," earned only as a result of IOLTA rules and earned upon otherwise barren client principal, "follows principal." The slogan "interest follows principal" no more answers that question than
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