Page:United States Reports, Volume 545.djvu/538



Opinion of the Court citizen B for the sole reason that citizen B will put the property to a more productive use and thus pay more taxes. Such a one-to-one transfer of property, executed outside the conﬁnes of an integrated development plan, is not presented in this case. While such an unusual exercise of government power would certainly raise a suspicion that a private purpose was afoot, the hypothetical cases posited by petitioners can be confronted if and when they arise. They do not warrant the crafting of an artiﬁcial restriction on the concept of public use.

Alternatively, petitioners maintain that for takings of this kind we should require a “reasonable certainty” that the expected public beneﬁts will actually accrue. Such a rule, however, would represent an even greater departure from