Is there a link to this case decision?
Link to Pacific Legal Foudnation's analysis which presumably includes case links:
http://www.pacificlegal.org/view_Commentaries.asp?iID=169&sTitle=John+Roberts%3A+A+Supreme+Property+Rights+Disaster+in+the+Making
"In a notorious case in 2002, John Roberts, then a private attorney, argued that several dozen mostly elderly and middle class landowners should not receive a penny in compensation even after a local land use agency had prohibited all use of their property near Lake Tahoe for nearly 30 years.
"In a nutshell, Roberts argued that impacts to property owners must be balanced against the utility of the regulationÖin a way that tilts almost every time in the governmentÒs favor.
"Unfortunately for the landowners, the Court agreed with him.
"Of course, one might argue, Roberts was only doing what he was being paid to do as a high-priced lawyer to represent his client. But why then did he take the case for a Ósubstantially reducedÔ fee as the chief of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency admits?
"More disturbingly, RobertÒs representation of the agency is entirely consistent with the statist philosophy he expressed in a 1978 Harvard Law Review article on land use law. He argued against clear rules that would put boundaries on government power over property in favor of essentially the same government-friendly Óbalancing testÔ that he advocated for in the Lake Tahoe case.
"Even more troubling, he proposed a scheme that would deny money to landowners whose property is taken, using the sort of rhetoric that reminds us of Bill ClintonÒs prevarications over the meaning of the word Óis.Ô Roberts wrote: ÓThe very terms of the fifth amendment, furthermore, are sufficiently flexible to accommodate changing notions of what compensation is Ñjust.ÒÔ
"Put another way, what we have here is not the Óliving constitutionÔ so derided by strict constructionists, but a Ómutating virusÔ infinitely malleable in the service of the state, and undeniably threatening to the rights of property owners. Justice OÒConnor was a swing vote on property; with Roberts it will be the property owners who will be twisting in the wind."