The proposition that the sovereign is endowed with inherent authority to take or expropriate private property for “public uses, when public necessity or utility require it,”  on the basis of equitable indemnification to the aggrieved private stakeholder, has been at the core of Western legal thought since time immemorial. The historical record shows, for instance, the existence in ancient Greece of “legislation for the valuation of noncitizens’ property that might be wanted to build temples,”  and the “laying of drains in private fields in Euboea with payment to the landowner.”  The learned Justinian, author of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, appears to have believed that “land could be taken from churches for the public good (ad reipúblicae utilitatem), provided that equal or greater property was given in exchange.” 

 

The birth of the modern doctrine of eminent domain, however, has its roots in the rise of the Westphalian nation-state in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War. It was in the light of such a geopolitical tapestry, that continental jurists such as Samuel von Pufendorf,  Cornelius van Bynkersheck,  Emer de Vattel  and, more importantly, Hugo Grotius  articulated the principle that sovereigns do enjoy a right of dominium eminens, stating that it “grows out of the necessities of their being […] is the offspring of political necessity; and […] is inseparable from sovereignty […].”  The notion that, as a matter of natural law, “the individual, whose property is thus sacrificed, must be indemnified,”  stood as the corollary to the dominium eminens doctrine.