Centerfield

Eminent Domain Update

Down below I started a thread on eminent domain, and I wanted to post an update by including a litle more info I gleaned from Abusing Eminent Domain by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe. (For you scorekeepers, yup, Jacoby leans pretty far to the right. I don't always agree with him, but I do here, unless he's making up the facts, which I don't think he is.)

The story starter about the Supreme Court's decision to review eminent domain is here.

The relevant additional info that I hadn't been aware of is that the exact phrasing in the Constitution talks about taking land for public use, not simply public good. It was a later decision in 1954 that expanded the practice by inferring that public use implied public purpose. Regardless of the merits, it sure seems that this precedent took us from a concrete understanding to a much more amorphous one, and subsequent to this, governments have tended towards not being especially worried about taking people's land as long as felt they had a decent rationale. I'm not a strict constructionist, but it seems to me that taking land should be harder to do, especially if it ends up in the hands of other private owners.

Generally, I think that if you own land and someone else wants it but you don't want to sell it, as long as it is in reasonable repair and you are getting what you want out of it, you should be well within your rights to tell those other interested parties "tough sh!t, it's mine!" The only time I can see making exceptions is when the public need is clear, urgent, and can't be fulfilled via other reasonable alternatives.