Power

Definition.--The police power of a State today embraces
regulations designed to promote the public convenience or the general
prosperity as well as those to promote public safety, health, morals,
and is not confined to the suppression of what is offensive, disorderly,
or unsanitary, but extends to what is for the greatest welfare of the
State.[104]

Limitations on the Police Power.--Because the police power of a
State is the least limitable of the exercises of government, such
limitations as are applicable thereto are not readily definable. Being
neither susceptible of circumstantial precision, nor discoverable by any
formula, these limitations can be determined only through appropriate
regard to the subject matter of the exercise of that power.[105] "It is
settled [however] that neither the 'contract' clause nor the 'due
process' clause had the effect of overriding the power of the State to
establish all regulations that are reasonably necessary to secure the
health, safety, good order, comfort, or general welfare of the
community; that this power can neither be abdicated nor bargained away,
and is inalienable even by express grant; and that all contract and
property [or other vested] rights are held subject to its fair
exercise."[106] Insofar as the police power is utilized by a State, the
means employed to effect its exercise can be neither arbitrary nor
oppressive, but must bear a real and substantial relation to an end
which is public, specifically, the public health, public safety, or
public morals, or some other phase of the general welfare.[107]

The general rule is that if a police power regulation goes too far, it
will be recognized as a taking of property for which compensation must
be paid.[108] Yet where mutual advantage is a sufficient compensation,
an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insignificant
taking of private property for what in its immediate purpose seems to be
a private use.[109] On the other hand, mere "cost and inconvenience
(different words, probably, for the same thing) would have to be very
great before they could become an element in the consideration of the
right of a State to exert its reserved power or its police power."[110]
Moreover, it is elementary that enforcement of uncompensated obedience
to a regulation passed in the legitimate exertion of the police power is
not a taking without due process of law.[111] Similarly, initial
compliance with a regulat