High Court OKs Personal Property Seizures

[SuperScout]

While your recommendation for a constitutional amendment may have some merit, by the time it gets added, if it ever gets approved, we may have already lost all the personal and/or real property we ever had. A more sensible and timely solution is what you advocated at the end of your post: get the liberals off the Supreme Court, or in practical terms, appoint conservative judges who will rule constitutionally, not extra-legally.

Eminent domain shold be used very carefully, and then only by governmental entities. To convey this right to private citizens is to invite anarchy and chaos. How those liberal justices found that right in the US Constitution is still a mystery to me.

[SparrowHawk62]

Make me move to put in another strip mall, no way in hell!
Load the shot gun woman and watch my back, I'm going in!

[Arrow]

So where's the outrage against the liberal activist judges that voted this in?

Lordy Ms ClawdyI see the smoke clearin' and guess who standin' behind the green door?

"O'Connor was joined in her dissent by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They wrote that the majority had tilted in favor of those with "disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

Who'd "thunk" it

Arrow>>>>>>>>>

[SuperScout]

Before, the liberal senators wanted to hold an appointees feet to the secular fireplace, demanding a blood allegiance to the unholy sacrifice of unborn children as a condition of confirmation. Now, the new bar has been raised, one even more critical than a relative position vis a vis Roe vs. Wade, and that being the position on eminent domain and personal property rights. If the current ruling is allowed to stand for long, the death knell of the Republic has been sounded, and some of us have heard it. Absent private property rights, and we all become slaves to an oligarchy that wants our land. When they pry my cold dead finger...

And I'm with Sis, where's the outrage? I keep hearing how those wonderful liberals are looking out for us, but they must be looking out from Martha's Vineyard, as I can't hear anything but their limp chortles.

[Arrow]

Kelo et al V City Of New London et al

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...0&invol=04-108

[QM3steve]

Let me guess...the homes of Justice John Paul Stevens, Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer are no where an area that could be effected! High on some "Buena Vista" mountaintop or so far out in the boondocks that even a logger wouldn't consider the land.

Who are these politicians who make these laws!? Are they not an elected position? The almighty dollar was talking again! Seemingly swayed by wealthy developement engineers who have nothing better to do than push a pencil around a drawing board designing "usable public space!"

We need to wake up! This is just the start! 5th Amendment? Seisure, eminent domain, public use...does that fit together? The rich get richer.

[Arrow]

Justice O'Connor, with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.Over two centuries ago, just after the Bill of Rights was ratified, Justice Chase wrote:

"An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority.... A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean.... [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it." Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (emphasis deleted).

Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded--i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public--in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings "for public use" is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent.

[Arrow]

Justice Thomas, dissenting.

Long ago, William Blackstone wrote that "the law of the land ... postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property." 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 134-135 (1765) (hereinafter Blackstone). The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for "public necessity," but instead for "public use." Amdt. 5. Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a "'[P]ublic [P]urpose'" Clause, ante, at 9-10 (or perhaps the "Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society" Clause, ante, at 8 (capitalization added)), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is "legitimate" and the means "not irrational," ante, at 17 (internal quotation marks omitted). This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a "public use."

I cannot agree. If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, at 1-2, 8-13. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them.

[39mto39g]

The United States has been doing this for a long time, They just call it by a different name. Where did the United States get all the Indian land, Where did we get the original 13 states, where did we get Texas, Where did we get California, We just call it a different name, but the result is the same. Take land give it to someone else. Im not saying its ok, but we also don't need to act like this is something new. Hell even the Damm yankees took land from Southern farmers. Banks do it right now, Miss a payment on your house and watch.

Ron

[Arrow]

Ron is rightbut I'm thinkin' the good ole' boys here in Oklahoma outside of the metropolitan areas of Tulsa and OKC be they land owners holding thousands of acres or one acre are notgoing to be inclined to listen to a history lesson if someone trys to take their land. Nope can't see them saddlin' up and ridin' into the sunset peaceful like. I've got a brother in law, Vietnam Veteran, 101st Airborne that has busted his fanny for years to build what he is building now.He's no rhinestone cowboy, born and raised on a ranch in the panhandle of Oklahoma. He would rather die where he stands than give up his land. Chris is right about this one.

Arrow>>>>>>