Washington Post says it’s the right decision.
New York Times calls it a welcome vindication of cities’ ability to act in the public interest.
This, right here, I think may be the one of the main differences between a Conservative and a Liberal type. It is strange, because for all of the Conservative reputation for not caring about people I think that they may actually have more trust in them than at least this Liberal.
For my part, when you get right down to it, I view most people as panicky, stupid and provincial. Further, I think that our elected officials in the Legislature perfectly reflect this. I do not trust them to do the right thing in a timely manner.
So, when you start from there and you have a crystal clear view of what is fair, good and free, it is hard not to yearn for some way to ram some changes down the bumpkin’s throats and drag the motherfuckers at least into the 20th century.
I know that practically we can’t really do this, but man things are getting really frustrating around here and I am getting so tired of the way that things are.
It’s interesting that several of the justices wanted to give the legislatures wide lattitude in interpretting “public use” but no lattitude at all in interpretting “commerce”.
You misspelled “editorial”
But “editorials” were exactly what was being asked for. No?
I know. Its just that Bricker is usually so precice in his language that I thought that post worth a comment.
To some extent I agree with you. The legislature can get out of control and it certainly has done that at times.
But my answer to that problem is: That’s precisely why we have a constitution, and why we demand a large super-majority to change it. That’s the check on the legislature, as it should have been in this case. We can all hold up the constitution and at least argue about what it says. We can’t reliably predict what an unelected justice will or won’t do if (s)he’s give free reign to establish “the Good”.
The liberal justices seem to have forgotten why that “public use” clause was put into the Constitution in the first place. The Bills of Rights was created because we can’t always trust the legislature to do the right thing. When our lawmakers oversteps their bounds, we need to be able to point to the Constitution and say, “Hold it, guys! This document here clearly says that you can’t do that!” The 5th Ammendment is a limit an the legislature’s power. Allowing the legislature to interpret the “public use” clause negates the whole purpose of having that clause in there.
This is a very naiive and short-sighted decision on the part of the Supreme Court.
(For the record, I consider eminent domain to be morally questionable even in the best of cases, so I favor strict interpretation in this case.)
State action versus Federal action. Two very different animals.
Good point.
Cliffy, you’re on target in every way.
The two issues seem to be whether it was the right decision in terms of constutional law, and is the condemnation itself right. People here have argued convincingly, I think, that in terms of constitutional law it’s nothing strange or new.
Let’s look at the rightness of the condemnation. I am a commercial real estate agent who works with developers. The amount of outrage in the thread demonstrates that most here simply don’t understand how land development works and why condemning the property of holdouts is necessary.
People have been giving the most extreme possible examples of land condemnation: A corrupt government taking the land of an innocent grandma and giving it to a greedy slimeball developer who ends up producing something that hurts the public instead of helping it. Well, yeah, that would be bad, wouldn’t it?
Another examples simply display ignorance. WalMart buys cheap, undeveloped land; it doesn’t get the government to condemn a bunch of old ladies’ houses so that it can plop down a 60,000 sf building in the middle of a subdivision.
In fact no developer wants to do that, and very few do. Look at any city. You have industrial areas, residential areas, and commercial areas (office and retail). Then you have agricultural land. As a city grows, the agricultural land gets bought up and turned into one of the three other types of property. Most of the time, developers just take these blank slates and build something new. That’s the easiest way to develop, and many developers ain’t all that creative anyway.
Demolishing old buildings on land is expensive. Getting stuff rezoned is time-consuming. More than anything, going through the legal rigamorale of a condemnation suit is time-consuming, expensive, and bad PR. With all the land out there, why bother?
And developers mostly don’t bother. The issue doesn’t come up in the first place. And when it does come up, it’s for big, big, gotta-do-it type projects. Stadiums, huge malls, special stuff (I am excluding from comment roads, schools, and other “nice” things that people here don’t seem to have a problem with).
The developers will try to buy up the land outright, and often they will succeed. Some people will demand a lot of money, and most of them will get what they want too. Then you have the asshole holdouts who are either trying to jack the price of their land to the stratosphere (they are the greedy ones, not the developers), or people like some of the morons in this thread who say they’ll defend their property against condemnation with guns.
Most of these people are old people. They are not nice grammas who just want to live on 150 Elm St. until they pass on; those people have already sold out and are living elsewhere. No, they’re petty old fuckers who like to be at the center of a ruckus. Or they have been investing in real estate all their lives and just like the game of holding out and trying to get more. Most of the time, it isn’t even houses: it’s industrial or commercial land that they underutilize or let go absolutely to hell.
There is a rich northern suburb here that shall go unnamed, but which is trying like hell, valiantly, to build cool new stuff that will benefit the whole city. But you’ve got oldies with shitty, dilapidated industrial properties. They have no intention of renting out the properties, they’ve got no intention of selling it at a reasonable price, and they’re just being cocks about everything the city is trying to do. They are nothing like any of the pitiable examples in this thread.
Another example: To build Circle Center Mall, which has greatly helped to revitalize downtown Indy, Simon had to do battle with a holdold who had rather managed his crappy building in a crappy downtown than sell it and help make downtown better. IIRC, the case was settled out of court, but the threat of condemnation is what moved the holdout.
BTW, all the liber-conservative guff in this thread has just been sad; talk about political finger-painting. As a socialist, I need make no apology for my belief that the government should have the right to take and use land for the public benefit. With the government’s right to put these dickhead property-owners in their place and grant the land to those who will steward it properly, many new urban projects of worth would needlessly bite the dust.
It shouldn’t matter if they’re petty old fuckers or oldies or cocks or managers of crappy buildings. These people own the property and the government should not have the right to tell them they have to sell it to somebody else so a mall or some other “cool stuff” can be built there.
Just out of interest, what’s you’re definition of “steward it properly”? Because many of the people kicked out in decisions like this, including many of the people in the New London case that sparked this decision, were actually living in the places from which they are to be removed. Personally, i can’t think of better “stewardship” for property than using it as a home.
Bolding added to “own.”
Well, what does “own” mean? When you “own” something does a silver cord extend from your midriff to the property, making it “yours”?
No, ownership is a social construct (a very natural one and perhaps intrinsic to human nature, but nevertheless a creation of human society), and each society determines what form that construct will take.
You say above, “The government should not have the right…” Why not? I say that the government should have the right so as to prevent harm to society (eyesore buidlings, unused assets) and to foster the greater good.
Care to justify your statement?
I can’t comment on that particular case; no knowledge.
Any government power can be used to ill effect, and often any power is so used. But simply recognizing this fact doesn’t mean we ought to deny the government a particular power. Contrariwise, we shouldn’t necessarily grant the government a power simply because it will be used for good most of the time.
The power of eminent domain, in my estimation, is absolutely essential to the function of a modern polity, and the examples about which everyone is whining in this thread are not good examples of why eminent domain should not be used for economic development purposes. They may be good examples, however, of bad projects.
In direct answer to your question: I don’t know whether those home owners were good stewards of their assets or not. I have no reason to believe that they weren’t.
But it is still a rare thing for residential neighborhoods to be mown down for economic development projects. For highways and airports, sure. But developers are always asking, “How many rooftops? What’s the traffic count?” They want houses with people in them near their projects so that they’ll use them (for commercial properties). For industrial they just want to be on industrial land near highways. The companies don’t want the trouble of demoing houses–that shit costs money, after all!
So it’s a pretty rare ec-dev project where someone wants to erase a residential neighborhood and put something up in its place. It would have to be in an urban environment where space is very tight or some aspect of the city needs to be used differently (I assume the harbor, in your example).
I laugh at the notion the developers are villains. They are the heroes here. The assume incredible risk in putting their projects together, projects that will create jobs, those cool stores you can’t live without, and aspects of the city that create pride and draw tourists. The are literally the builders of our modern urban environments.
What risk? Property is seized on their behalf and provided to them. Their burden of taxation is shifted to the community at large. They are provided infrastructure improvements, like new or widened roads, traffic signals, and street lighting. The only exposure they have — succeeding or failing to make a profit — is idential to that which every business has, including businesses that did not benefit from corporate welfare.
WTF are you trying to argue Aeschines? I mean ownership in the normal sense of the word and in the legal sense of the word and in the same sense of the word that you and I and every other person in this thread have been using it. Pretending you don’t understand my post or that there’s some meaningful debate about the terms is a ridiculous ploy to distract from the weakness of your position. Silver cords.
Yeah, we’re using it in the same sense. But I’m saying, So they own it–so what? Screaming, They own it! They own it! Doesn’t convince me that therefore the government shouldn’t have the right to take it from them. You have to argue that.
So what’s to stop the government from coming in and harvesting your organs while you’re still living? Sure you may own them, but hey, there’s this research scientist who happens to be the same blood type as you and he’s just about to make a major breakthrough, but his heart’s going to give out any day, so for the greater good, we’re going to take yours. You being the same blood type and all, plus you’re close to the hospital where the surgery would be performed, etc. etc.
I suspect many people are like me–there is a sanctity to personal property rights that is simply axiomatic. Are these rights absolute? No. Perhaps we can argue that someone can’t prevent critical infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) from being installed in the name of “ownership.” But even that should be sparingly and judiciously handled.
Beyond that–hey, it’s my stuff and I get to decide what the best use is for it. I do not cede that right to anyone else. You get to decide for your stuff. For me, it is the same principle as saying you can’t kill an innocent in the name of producing a greater benefit for a greater number of people, even if the benefit is inarguable. For me it is simply axiomatic. And those who say that they know better–they know what’s best for all of us–cut no ice with me.