I think it can still be said, though, that the US Supreme Court was following it’s own precedent.
In 1984 the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 that reached the same result as Kelo. In the Midkiff case, however, it was much easier to say “well, who cares about the constitutionality of it, at least the result was for the best”. That’s a case of, what one of my professors used to call, “bad facts resulting in bad law” – i.e., in 1984 the justices bent over backward trying to reach a “good” result, but in the process paved the way for the Kelo decision.
Sure. My point about precedent related specifically to the Poletown v. Detroit decision in Michigan.
While Kelo did follow the precedent set my Midkiff, and indeed referred to it on multiple occasions, my non-con-lawyer analysis disagrees with some of their reasoning.
For example, in Kelo the decision states that “the City’s development plan was not adopted ‘to benefit a particular class of identifiable individuals,’” and argues that if it were, it would fail the test of proper public use, following Midkiff, which argued that a “purely private taking” would be unnaceptable under the public use doctrine.
Admittedly, there is room for subjective disagreement and conflicting analysis here, but i think that the case in Connecticut was far more obviously one in which any public benefit was completely incidental to the main exercise of eminent domain than was the case in Hawai’i. I understand that others might not arrive at the same conclusion, but it seemed to me from the beginning that the New London case was a blatant use of the “public use” excuse to cover for a sweetheart deal between the council and Pfizer. The very “development plan” that the courts found so compelling in the Kelo case was put together, in large measure, by Pfizer itself.
The two cases deal with the same general issue, but i think the differences are sufficient to draw important distinctions between them in terms of what constitutes appropriate use of eminent domain.
The key difference is also that the land seized in Midkiff was not being given over to commercial use- and, moreover, that the landowners in Midkiff were in some senses operating as a cartel.
Absolutely. There is a far more compelling public interest in finding large segments of the population somewhere affordable to live, than there is in handing over land to a multi-billion-dollar private corporation (along with massive tax breaks) in the hope that they abide by their (non-binding) promise to hang around and bring economic prosperity.
Perhaps one of our lawyers can weigh in here: are there different levels of eminent domain scrutiny? To me, it seems natural that seizure of a homestead under eminent domain should require a more compelling or more broadly based justification than seizure of commercial or undeveloped land, but is that the case?
Maybe as a parting gift to the citizens of New London, Pfizer can give everyone a 6-month supply of Zoloft and Celebrex.*
*Viagra would be seen as in bad taste.
Like anything else, cities die. It sucks, but it will happen eventually, and there’s only so much that can be done before it gives up the ghost or is resurrected into an entirely new town. And I don’t think that people should have their rights trampled over in a last-ditch efforts to keep them on life support.
Stevens cited Hathcock, noting that some states impose stricter rules than the “federal baseline” in determining the appropriate definition of “public use.”
I;m not exactly disagreeing with your principle here, but I thinkpeople are missing the point.
Whatever New Lodon’s problems, the city stupidly tore up a vibrant, strong neighborhood to hand over to someone else. That’s idiocy, because no matter how things changed, it could not improve by definition. You can never improve your city by shoving happy fmilies off and their land and away from it. ven if you make the city wealthier, it will be a worse place to live. And probably, the people in charge of New London knew that. They just wanted to tax income they dreamed would come down the line. Now it won’t, of course, and it didn’t take a genius to see that this was coming. Modern business is extremely hyperactive; there will always be some new reason to move something, and facilities set to lose big tax incentives are the easy choices.
Second, too many people here are whining about Big Corporations, and are thus missing the entire goddamn point. Are you stupid enough to think the problem is that Pfizer makes shitloads of cash? What the fuck? Cities do this kind of thing with local developers all the time, and usually they’re no more kind or honest about it than Pfizer is/was in new London. Exactly the same thing happens, so don’t be a dumbass: the identity of the enriched, well-connected developer doesn’t really fucking matter, and it ain’t usually some Big Corporation who’s at fault anyway.
This is what I recall of the case. At the time, as much as I think the city’s use of eminent domain was wrong, I thought (and still think) the case was decided correctly. That is, eminent domain is constitutional; any (and every) area should pass laws defining its extent.
IMHO, the one good thing that came out of this case was that many jurisdictions subsequently passed laws doing exactly that.
I still don’t understand why the court relied on Midkiff, which again, was as much about antitrust law as eminent domain, rather than Berman v. Parker.
I’m no Constitutional lawyer, but i’m not sure it’s true to say that the court relied on Midkiff rather than Berman. Like most Supreme Court decisions, the ruling relied on a whole bunch of cases. Berman is referred to multiple times in the majority opinion. The example from Midkiff that i gave, above, is just one of a whole bunch of areas in which the court’s decision made reference to prior cases; it was not the only issue on which the case turned.
Awesome reference.