Five years ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down a poor, and consequently notorious, decision in Kelo v. City of New London. Here’s a brief summary of the case, as described in the preceding link:
The case arose from the condemnation by New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property so that it could be used as part of a comprehensive redevelopment plan. The Court held in a 5-4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible “public use” under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
In September 2009, the land where Susette Kelo’s home had once stood was an empty lot, and the promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized.
Because the case was so wrongly decided, and drew so much legitimate criticism, it’s anniversary is marked. The Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm committed to individual rights and economic freedom, has marked Kelo‘s fifth anniversary with white paper and a video.
The IJ notes that
Kelo was the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that became the property rights shot heard round the world. Wednesday marks its fifth anniversary.
In the merely five years since that infamous ruling, the vast majority of state legislatures, many state supreme courts and the public itself have acted to limit Kelo, which took away the homes of seven New London, Conn., families for private development and sparked a nationwide backlash against eminent domain for private gain.
And what now stands on the land where 75 homes once stood around Susette Kelo’s little pink house? Nothing but barren fields, weeds and feral cats. Ten years lost and more than $80 million in taxpayer money spent. Even Pfizer, which received massive corporate welfare to move to New London and sparked the abuses of eminent domain, has now announced that it will close its research and development headquarters and leave New London.
Here’s a link to the report, entitled, The Sweeping Backlash Against One of the Supreme Court’s Most-Despised Decisions.
Here’s the IJ video:
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxru-qxuL4
An accompanying link to the Castle Coalition, of Citizens Fighting Eminent Domain Abuse, shows that Wisconsin receives only a C+ grade for reforms since Kelo: “New eminent domain law prevents bogus “blight” designations for residential properties only.”
These designations are often bogus — so-called “blight” becomes what politicians and bureaucrats say it is, and citizens’ property is taken and destroyed to feed the ambitions of government men and women who think they know better what to do with private property. These bureaucrats and politicians didn’t earn the money for those properties, or purchase them, but still they’re sure they can use them better than you can.
Predictably, that arrogance violates both a person’s rights and common sense: people wrongly lose what’s theirs, and government officials use it poorly. It would be wrong even if they could use what they took (as its not theirs), but these schemes seldom turn out well in any event.