Want To Get Mad?

Note: As always, today's soccer post can be found below.

This week's Economist featured an article about a Supreme Court decision handed down last October in a case called Kelo v. City of New London. Amendment 5 to the U.S. Consitution states that:

"[Nor] shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

When most people think of taking private property for public use, they think of houses being bull-dozed to build a highway. They certainly don't imagine that their homes (or property) would be destroyed so that a private developer could build on that sight. However, that's exactly what happened in this instance and what was at stake in Kelo v. City of New London. (The court ruling can be read in its entirety here).

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the City of New London was justified because
"in addition to creating jobs, generating tax revenue, and helping to build momentum for the revitalization of downtown New London,. id., at 92, the plan was also designed to make the City more attractive and to create leisure and recreational opportunities on the waterfront and in the park." This of course has nothing to do with "slums or roads" (as the Economist writes), but it does massively expand the government's power of eminent domain. Indeed, what's to stop them from removing any private property that gets in the way of property development?

Justice John Paul Stevens, defending the majority opinion of the court, cited a 1954 Supreme Court Case (Berman v. Parker) in which, "this Court upheld a redevelopment plan targeting a blighted area of Washington, D. C., in which most of the housing for the areas 5,000 inhabitants was beyond repair." But the residents in the case in question certainly did not live in a blighted area of New London. This ruling gives a power to the government that it shouldn't have. Market forces will naturally take care of private development projects. Now the government has the power to take matters into its own hands regards eminent domain.

Show your support for organizations like the Libertarian Institute for Justice which opposes the right to eminent domain. Certainly, I don't believe that the government's going to come bulldoze my house, but that won't stop them from bulldozing some else's.