Editors' Summary: In the interests of preserving the scenic and recreational values of its long coastline and guaranteeing the public access necessary for general exploitation of those values, California has developed a system for strictly regulating coastal development. The regulatory system, born in a public initiative in 1972, developed during a four-year planning period, and enacted in the 1976 Coastal Zone Conservation Act, has been a controversial experiment in state land use control to protect an invaluable public resource. Mr. Jacobs outlines the legal history of California coastal regulation and reviews the current legal status of the major features of the 1976 Coastal Act. He notes that the Act has withstood most of the legal challenges to its key provisions, but that uncertainty in the law of takings continues to make application of the Act a delicate matter. He concludes by noting that the current administration in California is reconsidering the wisdom of such intensive state regulation of land use, but that the development and implementation of the Coastal Act may have permanently heightened public concern over the risk of loss of coastal recreational and scenic values.