Kelo et al v. City of New London
The Supreme Court has given the government permission to use eminent domain powers to seize homes and businesses for private development. This 5-4 decision by the court will up the ante in the eminent domain debate. The court's reasoning?
“The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including—but by no means limited to—new jobs and increased tax revenue,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
All it takes to steal my neighbor's property is a business plan? Previous precedent required evidence of a blighted neighborhood to allow this sort of a taking. Now, as Justice O'Connor warns, it has been widened:
“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” Justice O'Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
There are prominent examples of that in Las Vegas already, and in Oregon similar kinds of takings due to zoning were combatted with Measure 37:
the owner of private real property is entitled to receive just compensation when a land use regulation is enacted after the owner or a family member became the owner of the property if the regulation restricts the use of the property and reduces its fair market value.
Will the Supreme Court come along and throw out Measure 37 as well? Will it take a national constitutional amendment to set the limits on what the government can take? I will be interesting to see what the Castle Coalition says about this new development.
Update: I'm adding this to the Beltway Traffic Jam.
Josh Poulson
Posted Thursday, Jun 23 2005 09:17 AM
![[Feed]](http://pun.org/oslo/feed_blue_32.png){kind=small}
