THIS is probably going to prove to be the most portentious and just-plain-WRONG SCOTUS ruling since 'Dred Scot', and the damage done to the concept of limited government with enumerated powers won't be known for the years it takes to reverse it.
How a body of brilliant minds, schooled in the law and the Constitution and its purpose could do something so obviously immoral passes my understanding.
If this doesn't argue for conservative justices, the need of, instantly and forever, I don't know what does.
Bush should nominate TWO to the SCOTUS immediately, and have a third ready to go the minute one of the sitting Supremes dies or resigns. If this COURT isn't changed immediately, we may not have a Bill of Rights by the time this President's term is over.
Damaging 'Deference'
By George F. Will
Post
Friday, June 24, 2005; A31
The country is bracing for a bruising battle over filling a Supreme Court vacancy, a battle in which conservatives will praise "judicial restraint" and "deference" to popularly elected branches of government and liberals will praise judicial activism in defense of individual rights. But consider what the court did yesterday.
Most conservatives hoped that, in the most important case the court was to decide this term, judicial activism would put a leash on popularly elected local governments and would pull courts more deeply into American governance to protect the rights of individuals. Yesterday conservatives were disappointed.
The case came from New London, Conn., where the city government, like all governments, wants more revenue and has empowered a private entity, New London Development Corp., to exercise the awesome power of eminent domain. It has done so to condemn an unblighted working-class neighborhood in order to give the space to private developers whose condominiums, luxury hotel and private offices would pay more taxes than do the owners of the condemned homes and businesses.
The question answered yesterday was: Can government profit by seizing the property of people of modest means and giving it to wealthy people who can pay more taxes than can be extracted from the original owners? The court answered yes.
The Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "nor shall private property be taken for public use , without just compensation" (emphasis added). All state constitutions echo the Constitution's Framers by stipulating that takings must be for "public use." The Framers, who weighed their words, clearly intended the adjective "public" to circumscribe government's power: Government should take private property only to create things -- roads, bridges, parks, public buildings -- directly owned or primarily used by the general public.
Fighting eviction from homes one of them had lived in all her life, the New London owners appealed to Connecticut's Supreme Court, which ruled 4 to 3 against them. Yesterday they lost again. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5 to 4 ruling that drains the phrase "public use" of its clearly intended function of denying to government an untrammeled power to dispossess individuals of their most precious property: their homes and businesses.
During oral arguments in February, Justice Antonin Scalia distilled the essence of New London's brazen claim: "You can take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?" Yesterday the court said that the modifier "public" in the phrase "public use" does not modify government power at all. That is the logic of the opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
In a tart dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Clarence Thomas and Scalia, noted that the consequences of this decision "will not be random." She says it is "likely" -- a considerable understatement -- that the beneficiaries of the decision will be people "with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
Those on the receiving end of the life-shattering power that the court has validated will almost always be individuals of modest means. So this liberal decision -- it augments government power to aggrandize itself by bulldozing individuals' interests -- favors muscular economic battalions at the expense of society's little platoons, such as homeowners and the neighborhoods they comprise.
Dissenting separately, Thomas noted the common-law origins and clearly restrictive purpose of the Framers' "public use" requirement. And responding to the majority's dictum that the court should not "second-guess" the New London city government's "considered judgment" about what constitutes seizing property for "public use," he said: A court owes "no deference" to a legislature's or city government's self-interested reinterpretation of the phrase "public use," a notably explicit clause of the Bill of Rights, any more than a court owes deference to a legislature's determination of what constitutes a "reasonable" search of a home.
Liberalism triumphed yesterday. Government became radically unlimited in seizing the very kinds of private property that should guarantee individuals a sphere of autonomy against government.
Conservatives should be reminded to be careful what they wish for. Their often-reflexive rhetoric praises "judicial restraint" and deference to -- it sometimes seems -- almost unleashable powers of the elected branches of governments. However, in the debate about the proper role of the judiciary in American democracy, conservatives who dogmatically preach a populist creed of deference to majoritarianism will thereby abandon, or at least radically restrict, the judiciary's indispensable role in limiting government.
georgewill@washpost.com
Last edited by Bluesman; 24 Jun 05, at 18:43.
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
I started to post on this when i first heard about it but I was so angry I couldn't frame an articulate sentence. I've always felt that the existing eminent domain laws were too broad and this new precedent is horrible. Another piece of evidence that we have the best legal system money can buy.
Rule 303
Were losing all our freedoms one by one. I cannot even express my anger.
It is governmental decisions like this that opens the door to revolution. Greed has made them forget history. What bothers me most is that if the supreme court does not support and defend the constitution...who will?
"if the supreme court does not support and defend the constitution...who will?"
Let's ask the founding fathers for guidance:
"It is not only his right, but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
John Adams
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Thomas Jefferson
"This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train wretchedness and oppression."
Thomas Jefferson
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson
"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."
James Madison
"If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves."
Samuel Adams
"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe"
John Adams - 2nd Pres.
"Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it."
John Adams
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press." Thomas Jefferson
"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)
"If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained _ we must fight!"
Patrick Henry
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt in the House of Commons November 18, 1783
"We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787)
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
And what does Abraham Lincoln say?
"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution."
Abraham Lincoln
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question it's methods or throw light upon it's crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln
Ahhh, the wonders of socialism. This is rapidly becoming a 2nd ammendment issue...
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry
I'm not sure what it is. I know I don't like it. Eminent Domain should only be applied to essential public need. Highways, bridges, power generation, etc. This smells more like capitalism gone amok, to be honest. Wealthy private entities or corporations overpowering the individual.Originally Posted by Confed999
I used to spend a lot of time in Charleston, S.C. In Charleston's early days, the wealthy plantation owners, the social elite, the business owners, etc, all lived inland, away from the mosquitoes and other insects that infested the barrier islands. It was the servants and working class that populated the outlying areas.
Nowadays, the barrier islands are becoming highly desirable as oceanfront and bedroom communities, and as wealthy people move in and build big deluxe homes, the property taxes have risen accordingly. Families who have lived in these homes for generations can no longer afford the taxes, and are getting pushed out. Taxing someone out of their family home is plain wrong. The excess taxes should only be assessed when the property is sold, and the higher value is actually realized.
This court decision clears the way for the job to be finished. Developers who covet the land for condominiums and million dollar houses now have a legal tool to evict them, and the victims simply do not have the resources to put up a fight in the courts. It's a fukking crime.
You're right, it's starting to look like a second amendment issue.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
" I'm not sure what it is."
It's socialism in it's most pure form.
Ie, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Note also that the 'capitalist right' Judges all voted against this measure.
It was the leftist judges on the bench that just TOOK OUR RIGHTS TO PROPERTY AWAY.
Except that this ruling makes all property government property. Not even capitalists are safe now...
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry
I have to disagree.The government is only a secondary benificiary, it's the corporation who stands to gain the most. The property doesn't become public property, it just transfers to another private owner who will pay higher taxes. If it was a case of the state taking the property and building homeless shelters, low income housing, etc, than I might call it socialism. But this is just placing the ownership in wealthier hands.The case came from New London, Conn., where the city government, like all governments, wants more revenue and has empowered a private entity, New London Development Corp., to exercise the awesome power of eminent domain. It has done so to condemn an unblighted working-class neighborhood in order to give the space to private developers whose condominiums, luxury hotel and private offices would pay more taxes than do the owners of the condemned homes and businesses.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
But the moment the government thinks it can do better, that corporation is out. It's government deciding what it wishes to put on it's land. Government is the only one making the decisions. If a few members of the local government are even angry at you, they can take your home or business at will.
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry
No, that was Star Trek.
I realize that it was the liberal judges that carried the day, but their reason wasn't because this decision was in any way "redistrubuting" the wealth to the lower classes. It effects the exact opposite.
However, it is a way for the government to collect more money, which is in line with the liberal's goals of bigger government. The conservative judges, who might be considered more "capitalistic", opposed the decision not for economic reasons, but ideological ones, i.e. the individual right to be secure in his property.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
Like he said, socialism.
Further proof their rehetoic is BS, and it's all really about government control of our lives.
I'd agree, but for there to be capitalism, there has to be private ownership of property.
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry
The government has always had the power of eminent domain. It's the handing of the power to a private development corporation that is at issue here. Yes, the government could kick one corp out in favor of another, and yes, it does give the government more power over the land.
But the motivator here is money, both for the developer and the local governments. It's only couched in terms of public interest.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
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