page_56 < previous page page_56 next page > Page 56 records known as takings impact analyses (TIAs). TIAs must ''estimate, to the extent possible, the potential cost to the government in the event that a court later determines that an action constitutes a taking" (Attorney General's Guidelines 1988, p. 35; see also Folsom 1993). National organizations such as the Defenders of Property Rights and the American Legislative Exchange Council have trumpeted the order as a model for state legislation (Pollot 1989). State takings assessment laws, however, have not been equipped with the mechanisms found in NEPA that improve agency decision-making (Herz 1993). Filling a Void or Adding Red Tape? NEPA filled a void that courts and administrative agencies pursuing traditional approaches were unable to address. Administrative agencies narrowly defined public interests based on a single-minded view of their mission, regulatory approaches could not accommodate the complicated variables presented by environmental impacts, and courts lacked the institutional capacity to effectively intervene to protect the environment because they were required to settle disputes immediately before them and, therefore, could not generate the searching inquiry needed to assemble the broad spectrum of scientific and technical information essential to understanding the environmental consequences of a planned action. NEPA's process of open-ended inquiry offers an alternative that is well suited to tackling impact problems. According to the ecological model, human interaction with natural systems must be understood from a holistic perspective, recognizing that everything is related. The causal chain is not linear; initial impacts ripple with long-term consequences. Freed from the demands of crisis management, NEPA permits decision-makers to go beyond present impacts and look into the future, enabling them to draw a picture of possible cumulative impacts. Responding to property claims is basically a matter of routine judicial adjudication. A typical regulatory takings case involves an ad hoc balance of interests related to a specific place at a specific time. Takings cases do not benefit from abstract thinking. An unfocused inquiry greatly complicates legal analysis because court decisions over the course of seventy years have avoided establishing any set formula for determining when a regulation is a taking.2 Courts specialize in resolving fact-intensive disputes. Judges are accustomed to settling economic issues involving real property, including impacts on property values. Even staunch property rights advocates ac- 2.Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003,1015 (1992). Â < previous page page_56 next page >