What's Yours is Mine
Julian Sanchez | June 23, 2005, 10:56am
The Supreme Court has rendered its verdict in Kelo v. New London, and the widely-expected result has come to pass: a 5-4 loss for property rights. As Raich taught us that growing pot in your backyard for personal consumption is "interstate commerce," Kelo informs us that taking people's homes to hand over to private developers building an office complex is a "public use."
You do wonder: Now that the "liberal" justices on the court have sided with the drug warriors against cancer patients, and with a plan to rob people of their homes for the benefit of wealthy developers, will some court-watchers on the left begin to question the wisdom of having let economic freedom become the red-headed stepchild of modern jurisprudence?
UPDATE: The opinions are here. As with Raich (in a sense just a reaffirmation of Wickard), we're just seeing a particularly outrageous confirmation of what was already, in effect, the law. As the majority opinion says, quoting an earlier decision, the "Court long ago rejected any literal requirement that condemned property be put into use for the ... public." Which is to say, they've rejected the notion that "public use" means anything more stringent than: "legislators want to do this." The Court's view is that any "public purpose" will do, and such purposes apparently include increased tax revenue. The straightforward implication is that any taking of a private residence to hand it over to a business, or just from a poor person to a wealthy person, will be a taking in service of a public purpose: As a general rule, the rich pay more taxes than the poor, and businesses pay more taxes than households.
UPDATE 2:The Institute for Justice's press release on the verdict is here.
R C Dean | June 23, 2005, 2:10pm | #
"In addition to creating jobs, generating tax revenue, and helping to “build momentum for the revitalization of downtown New London,” id., at 92, 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."
So all you have to do is cobble together a "plan" that is supposed to achieve a variety of nebulous, speculative, and/or subjective outcomes.
C'mon. I know a number of venture capitalists who would wet themselves laughing at a business plan that was as weak as what is described above. Its pretense, a sham, plain and simple. Sure, you can choose to fall for it (yeah, joe, I'm looking at you), but that doesn't make it legitimate or real.
This would justify just about any "taking" to create a Walmart, for example. How would that go down, joe? Well, it'll creat jobs and raise tax revenue, so who cares how much seizing the family farm puts in Sam Walton's pocket, eh?
I can't decide which has been a blacker day - today, the day the Court upheld McCain-Feingold, or the day the upheld federal jurisdiction over medical marijuana. Truly, the American experiment in government via a Constitutional republic is dead.
RandyAyn | June 23, 2005, 2:18pm | #
For some reason I just started thinking about the cover of the album "The Royal Scam" by Steely Dan. A tramp flops on a park bench underneath enormous buildings which have become raging animals at war with one another.
We are that tramp. Those buildings are the powers which control our lives, over which we ourselves have no control. We close our eyes and sleep, fearful of what we might encounter should we awaken.
Let us read from the Book of Steely Dan:
And they wandered in
From the city of St. John
Without a dime
Wearing coats that shined
Both red and green
Colors from their sunny island
From their boats of iron
They looked upon the promised land
Where surely life was sweet
On the rising tide
To New York City
Did they ride into the street
See the glory
Of the royal scam
They are hounded down
To the bottom of a bad town
Amid the ruins
Where they learn to fear
An angry race of fallen kings
Their dark companions
While the memory of
Their southern sky was clouded by
A savage winter
Every patron saint
Hung on the wall, shared the room
With twenty sinners
See the glory
Of the royal scam
By the blackened wall
He does it all
He thinks he's died and gone to heaven
Now the tale is told
By the old man back home
He reads the letter
How they are paid in gold
Just to babble in the back room
All night and waste their time
And they wandered in
From the city of St. John without a dime
See the glory
Of the royal scam
