By Josh Patashnik ( July 3, 2017, 10:29 AM EDT) -- The Supreme Court's most closely watched property rights case this term, Murr v. Wisconsin, involved what has come to be termed the "denominator problem" in regulatory takings law. The problem is this: where a plaintiff asserts that an onerous governmental regulation amounts to a taking of his or her property, a court must assess the impact of the regulation on the "parcel [of property] as a whole,"[1] not on just one subcomponent of it. But because any given person or company may possess a multitude of different property interests, identifying the relevant parcel for a court to analyze — the "denominator" of the takings inquiry — is sometimes a complicated endeavor. This has long been a source of confusion and discord for litigants and courts alike, and the court granted certiorari in Murr to shed some light on the matter....