Cite as: 526 U. S. 687 (1999)
Opinion of Souter, J.
See, e. g., Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U. S. 229, 240 (1984) ("There is . . . a role for courts to play in reviewing a legislature's judgment of what constitutes a public use, even . . . [if] it is an 'extremely narrow' one" (citation omitted)); Shoemaker, 147 U. S., at 298. See also 2A Sack-man, supra, at 7-81 to 7-82, and nn. 89-90 (listing state cases where condemnation clauses and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have been relied upon by property owners to contest attempts to acquire their property for private purposes); 2 J. Lewis, Law of Eminent Domain § 417, p. 923, and n. 51 (2d ed. 1900). What is more, when such a direct condemnation does have more than compensation at stake, the defense of no public purpose or authority closely resembles, if indeed it does not duplicate, one of the grounds of liability for inverse condemnation noted in Agins, 447 U. S., at 260-261, and raised in this case: the failure of the regulation to contribute substantially to the realization of a legitimate governmental purpose.4 Indeed, the distinction between direct and inverse condemnation becomes murkier still when one considers that, even though most inverse condemnation plaintiffs accept the lawfulness of the taking and just want money, see infra, at 747, n. 7, some such plaintiffs ask for an injunction against the government's action, in which event they seek the same ultimate relief as the direct condemnee who defends against the taking as unauthorized. If the direct condemnee has no right to a jury, see 2A Sackman, Nichols on Eminent Domain § 7.03[11][a], at 7-90 ("The question of whether a legislative determination of a public use is really public has been declared by the courts ultimately to be a judicial one"), the inverse condemnee should fare no differently.
4 See, e. g., J. Laitos, Law of Property Rights Protection § 12.04[A], pp. 12-12 to 12-13 (1999) ("The police power takings standard also means that the taking prohibition becomes more like a due process check on the police power"; describing two claims as "an identical test").
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