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Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses - even against their will - for private economic development.
It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.
Mr. P said:The Liberal side of the court just took away our private property rights..
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ERTY?SITE=MAFAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME
You have always seemed to misunderstand me...either out of ignorance or just a plainrtwngAvngr said:But p, if a judge says so it must be right and proper and constitutional. I thought that was your position on judges. Are we flipping you into the light and away from the darkness? Don't mention it!
Mr. P said:You have always seemed to misunderstand me...either out of ignorance or just a plain
attempt to argue..I have no time for your childish bullshit.
acludem said:This has been blown way out of proportion. I don't agree with the basis for this decision either, but it leaves the door open for State legislatures to set extremely stringent standards, which is what they will do. The decision, as I read it, really says that this is an issue for states to deal with. I was horrified at first as well, especially as I am seeing the value of my home go down because a greedy developer is building a bunch of cheap houses right across the street from me. Then I read what the real gist of the decision was, and while I disagreed with the conclusion of the majority, I could see how easy it will be to set standards and provide ample protection for property owners. I doubt you will see massive land grabs as a result of this decision, most city councils and mayors won't want to engage in this sort of activity - it makes it very difficult to get re-elected.
acludem
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Kennedy's Vast Domain
The Supreme Court's reverse Robin Hoods.
Friday, June 24, 2005 12:01 a.m.
The Supreme Court's "liberal" wing has a reputation in some circles as a guardian of the little guy and a protector of civil liberties. That deserves reconsideration in light of yesterday's decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The Court's four liberals (Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg) combined with the protean Anthony Kennedy to rule that local governments have more or less unlimited authority to seize homes and businesses.
No one disputes that this power of "eminent domain" makes sense in limited circumstances; the Constitution's Fifth Amendment explicitly provides for it. But the plain reading of that Amendment's "takings clause" also appears to require that eminent domain be invoked only when land is required for genuine "public use" such as roads. It further requires that the government pay owners "just compensation" in such cases.
The founding fathers added this clause to the Fifth Amendment--which also guarantees "due process" and protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination--because they understood that there could be no meaningful liberty in a country where the fruits of one's labor are subject to arbitrary government seizure.
That protection was immensely diminished by yesterday's 5-4 decision, which effectively erased the requirement that eminent domain be invoked for "public use." The Court said that the city of New London, Connecticut, was justified in evicting a group of plaintiffs led by homeowner Susette Kelo from their properties to make way for private development including a hotel and a Pfizer Corp. office. (Yes, the pharmaceutical Pfizer.) The properties to be seized and destroyed include Victorian homes and small businesses that have been in families for generations.
"The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Justice Kennedy wrote in concurrence that this could be considered public use because the development plan was "comprehensive" and "meant to address a serious city-wide depression." In other words, local governments can do what they want as long as they can plausibly argue that any kind of public interest will be served.
In his clarifying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas exposes this logic for the government land grab that it is. He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use Clause" with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"
And in a separate dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the use of this power in a reverse Robin Hood fashion--take from the poor, give to the rich--would become the norm, not the exception: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
That prospect helps explain the unusual coalition supporting the property owners in the case, ranging from the libertarian Institute for Justice (the lead lawyers) to the NAACP, AARP and the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Note the absence of ACLU, surprisingly quiet on this one.The latter three groups signed an amicus brief arguing that eminent domain has often been used against politically weak communities with high concentrations of minorities and elderly. Justice Thomas's opinion cites a wealth of data to that effect.
And it's not just the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment that's undermined by Kelo. So too is the guarantee of "just compensation." Why? Because there is no need to invoke eminent domain if developers are willing to pay what owners themselves consider just compensation.
Just compensation may differ substantially from so-called fair market value given the sentimental and other values many of us attach to our homes and other property. Even eager sellers will be hurt by Kelo, since developers will have every incentive to lowball their bids now that they can freely threaten to invoke eminent domain.
So, in just two weeks, the Supreme Court has rendered two major decisions on the limits of government. In Raich v. Gonzales the Court said there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do using the Commerce Clause as a justification. In Kelo, it's now ruled that there are effectively no limits on the predations of local governments against private property.
These kinds of judicial encroachments on liberty are precisely why Supreme Court nominations have become such high-stakes battles. If President Bush is truly the "strict constructionist" he professes to be, he will take note of the need to check this disturbing trend should he be presented with a High Court vacancy. And that's where the pressure needs to be. Us 'blue state' conservatives, must pressure our legislators to give the president's choices their chance to be voted on-up or down!
acludem said:This has been blown way out of proportion. I don't agree with the basis for this decision either, but it leaves the door open for State legislatures to set extremely stringent standards, which is what they will do. The decision, as I read it, really says that this is an issue for states to deal with. I was horrified at first as well, especially as I am seeing the value of my home go down because a greedy developer is building a bunch of cheap houses right across the street from me. Then I read what the real gist of the decision was, and while I disagreed with the conclusion of the majority, I could see how easy it will be to set standards and provide ample protection for property owners. I doubt you will see massive land grabs as a result of this decision, most city councils and mayors won't want to engage in this sort of activity - it makes it very difficult to get re-elected.
acludem
NO LIMITS
By GEORGE F. WILL
THE country is bracing for a bruising battle over filling a Supreme Court vacancy, a battle in which conservatives will praise "judicial restraint" and "deference" to popularly elected branches of government and liberals will praise judicial activism in defense of individual rights. But consider what the court did Thursday.
Most conservatives hoped that, in the most important case the court would decide this term, judicial activism would put a leash on popularly elected local governments and would pull courts more deeply into American governance in order to protect the rights of individuals. On Thursday, conservatives were disappointed.
The case came from New London, Conn., where the city government, like all governments, wants more revenues and has empowered a private entity, the New London Development Corporation, to exercise the awesome power of eminent domain. It has done so to condemn an unblighted working-class neighborhood in order to give the space to private developers whose condominiums, luxury hotel and private offices would pay more taxes than do the owners of the condemned homes and businesses.
The question answered Thursday was: Can government profit by seizing the property of people of modest means and giving it to wealthy people who can pay more taxes than can be extracted from the original owners? The court answered yes.
The Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" (emphasis added). All state constitutions echo the Constitution's Framers by stipulating that takings must be for "public use." The Framers, who weighed their words, clearly intended the adjective "public" to circumscribe government's power: Government should take private property only to create things roads, bridges, parks, public buildings directly owned or primarily used by the general public.
Fighting eviction from homes some of them had lived in all their lives, the New London owners appealed to Connecticut's Supreme Court, which ruled 4-3 against them. On Thursday they lost again. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling that drains the phrase "public use" of its clearly intended function of denying to government an untrammeled power to dispossess individuals of their most precious property their homes and businesses.
During oral arguments in February, Justice Antonin Scalia distilled the essence of New London's brazen claim: "You can take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?" On Thursday the court said that the modifier "public" in the phrase "public use" does not modify government power at all. That is the logic of the opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
In a tart dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, noted that the consequences of this decision "will not be random." She says it is "likely" a considerable understatement that the beneficiaries of the decision will be people "with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Those on the receiving end of the life-shattering power that the court has validated will almost always be individuals of modest means. So this liberal decision it augments government power to aggrandize itself by bulldozing individuals' interests favors muscular economic battalions at the expense of society's little platoons, such as homeowners and the neighborhoods they comprise.
Dissenting separately, Justice Thomas noted the common law origins and clearly restrictive purpose of the Framers' "public use" requirement. And responding to the majority's dictum that the court should not "second guess" the New London city government's "considered judgment" about what constitutes seizing property for "public use," he said: A court owes "no deference" to a legislature's or city government's self-interested reinterpretation of the phrase "public use," a notably explicit clause of the Bill of Rights, any more than a court owes deference to a legislature's determination of what constitutes a "reasonable" search of a home.
Liberalism triumphed Thursday. Government became radically unlimited in seizing the very kinds of private property that should guarantee individuals a sphere of autonomy against government.
Conservatives should be reminded to be careful what they wish for. Their often-reflexive rhetoric praises "judicial restraint" and deference to it sometimes seems almost unleashable powers of the elected branches of governments. However, in the debate about the proper role of the judiciary in American democracy, conservatives who dogmatically preach a populist creed of deference to majoritarianism will thereby abandon, or at least radically restrict, the judiciary's indispensable role in limiting government.
Which is not likely if the citizenry keeps up their non-involvement and desire to create more laws. It's now the conservatives that are too often asking for constitutional amendments on very narrow topics.dilloduck said:Am I missing something here?---Did not one branch of the federal government just give state governments more power and influence over the rights of individuals. Still smacks of excessive government intrusion into our private lives to me. The feds delegating this "right to infringe' to the states will ONLY work for the good of a conservative if the states NEVER USE IT !
Mr. P said:The Liberal side of the court just took away our private property rights..
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ERTY?SITE=MAFAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME
