Pacific Legal Foundation, a social justice law firm, explains here
And here is a money quotation:
As with so many contemporary legal questions, the origin of the debate over property rights stretches back to the very founding of our nation.
Among the key goals of our nation’s founding documents was to protect individual rights and to place strict limitations on the powers of both the federal and state governments. The Founders well understood that protecting private property rights was of paramount importance in meeting those goals.
While the colonists were still living under British rule, property rights were routinely violated. “Writs of Assistance” subjected colonists to invasive searches and seizures by British troops under the guise of searching for goods that may have been imported illegally and on which taxes had not been collected. This is precisely why the Fourth Amendment came into existence.
Several other key provisions in the Constitution recognize the fundamental purpose of property rights. For example, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which limits the power of the federal government, provides that “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Or consider the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which similarly limits the power of state and local governments by commanding that “…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
These provisions recognize the fundamental nature of the rights we call “property”—the right to tell others“keep out”; the right to develop and use land; and the right to derive income from that property. These rights were critically important, both to the Founders who adopted the original Constitution after the Revolution and the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War.
And this is where takings come in. The usual situation where the government’s power is limited is when it acquires private property by eminent domain. As the Supreme Court has recognized, all sovereign governments have the power of eminent domain by which they can force the owner of private property to sell it to the government.
But that power is limited: it can be executed only as long as the taking is for “public use,” and the government provides the owner with “just compensation.” If the public benefits from taking someone’s private property, it is only fair that the entire public—and not a lone property owner—bear the cost.
That is exactly how the Supreme Court summed it up more than 50 years ago:
“The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.”
A half-century later, that assessment remains a sound basis for limiting government power and protecting property owners in disputes over takings.
The typical situation is where private property is taken for some public use, such as a highway, post office, or military base, and the government agrees to compensate the owner. It may not seem fair to be forced to give up property, but at least the owner can be confident they’ll be justly compensated for the loss, thanks to the aforementioned Fifth Amendment guarantee.
