Kelo v. New London

Much was made of the Supreme Court decision last week about eminent domain. Some interpret it to mean the government can take your house for any reason. Eminent Domain has been around for a long time and says the government can take your land for public use and with just compensation (the 5th Amendment). In this case the taken land was given to a private company to develop.

The question comes down to: is urban renewal a public use? In this case, New London has double the unemployment rate of the state and it's lowest population since 1920. The New London Development Corp (a private non-profit firm created to help the city) created a plan to build a park and the city approved it. Pfizer said they'd move in next to it with a $300 million research facility. The NLDC created a plan for a waterfront conference hotel, a small urban village with restaurants and shopping, marinas, a riverwalk, 80 new residences, a new Coast Guard Museum, more than 90,000 sq ft of additional office space, parking etc. "In addition to creating jobs, generating tax revenue, and helping to 'build momentum for the revitalization of downtown New London,' 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." It affected 115 privately owned properties and land from a closed naval facility. 9 people owning 15 affected properties refused to sell out.

The opinion states clearly that the gov't can't take property from one private owner to give to another private owner, there must be public use (which in 1896 was ruled to include public purpose). it also says "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government. " and lists many cases the court upheld and says saying this one is different somehow doesn't work. The opinion is that the state and local gov't should know best, not the federal judiciary.

O'Connor's dissent (joined by Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) is that urban renewal is not a public use. And that in some of their previous decisions the original property was harmful to the community (not maintained) and that's not the case here. Though to me, there's no rule to eminent domain that the property taken must be in poor condition, so I don't see how that matters, particularly as no one claims every public-purpose taking was of a unmaintained property. She then goes on to state that under this new decision the line is blurry and I agree, but I don't think this decision blurs it more than it already is, lines are sometimes blurry. Thomas then writes his own additional dissent which as near as I can tell wants to overturn every public-purpose decision of the last 100 years so that we can go back to the founders original meaning of use (he cites a dictionary from 1773 for the word "use").

In our increasingly confusing times, it's odd that the liberals are defending states rights and previous decisions of the court while the conservatives want to limit states rights to protect individuals and go back to 200 years ago.