US Supreme Court has gone mad!

[Imran Siddiqui]

What exactly did he say that is untrue?

The untrue part is that this ruling makes your property subject to the whim of the government. Too many people around the country have said, this ruling means the government can take my house! Duh.. they could take it beforehand too. But most people don't realize that. The 'Bottom Line' doesn't help because this wasn't the ruling that made your private property owned at the pleasure of the government. Blame the common law for that.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Pish posh. Boortz has known and talkedvexclusively on the subject on numerous occaions.

His Beef and everyone's here is that the expanded interpretation of public good now simply is amechanism for one rivate citizen/organization to deprive others of their property assuming all they need do is grease the local Pols. Something that is an all together likely possibility.

[Imran Siddiqui]

For example, on another forum, there was an article linked where Pheonix was using eminent domain to claim houses to build an ASU facility. In the article some guy said because of the recent ruling, there is nothing that can stop the city.

Um... except this was a city condemning land for a STATE University!

Boortz may know the difference, but most people seemingly don't. And that sort of paragraph doesn't help matters because it basically asserts that this ruling reduced property rights in some way.

[Mr. Harley]

I repeat - it created a clear precedent where the law was murky. That is why SCOTUS took the case. In that context, the quote from the developer who also felt precedent had been uncertain (in the WSJ, not exactly a liberal rag) shows that this will have an impact on the behavior of developers reference this kind of (mis)use of Eminent Domain, making it more likely. I stand by my premise, independent of Boortz. I also happen to agree with him, too.

Many people have been VERY uncomfortable with the continuously expanding use of Eminent Domain throughout the history of this country. They didn't like it when it was used to force individuals to sell to private railroads, and while we are discussing something that happened over a century ago - maybe the dissenters had a point, i.e. the slippery slope analogy. Without those cases, what we have happening today could not have happened. It's use for economic develpment has appeared to be on the rise in the last several decades, IMHO, and evidently in the opinion of legal scholars, too.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Boortz may know the difference, but most people seemingly don't. And that sort of paragraph doesn't help matters because it basically asserts that this ruling reduced property rights in some way.

And in the context of one private entity using this ruling to facilitate depriving another of their property it most certainly is.

[GePap]

While I disagree with the Courts on this ruling, I do find the conservative opposition to this a bit strange. After all, what the Courts said was allow the local legislatures and executive offices the power to do this. Isn't this a case of the courts not overstepping and being "activist", but instead allowing the people's representatives to do what they think is best?

Since I have no inherent intellectual problem with "court activism", I have no problems with the Court smacking this down, but what do thoser who fear "the rule of judges" have to say?

After all, can't the public simply throw out of office those individuals who allow the feared corruption and nepotism? And if the public is so stupid or lazy or ill-informed to be incapable of, throught elections, making its will known to its representatives, then what exactly is wrong with some court activism here or there?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
then what exactly is wrong with some court activism here or there?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062301420.html

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062301420.html

Your link is broken.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap


Your link is broken.

Works fine for me. But anyway:

Damaging 'Deference'

By George F. Will

Friday, June 24, 2005; Page 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.

[GePap]

Your arguement is George Will somehow being magically able to tell us what the founders obviously meant?



Too funny.

Interestngly enough though, Will at the end sort of sets out a similar statement to mine:

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.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
Your arguement is George Will somehow being magically able to tell us what the founders obviously meant?

I just thought that you'd be interested in the fact he was making an arguement similar to yours and using the current case as an example. (He went into why he disagreed with the decision though)

[Mr. Harley]

After all, can't the public simply throw out of office those individuals who allow the feared corruption and nepotism?

Because often the majority is lazy , stupid, ill-informed or simply NIMBY - it's just eleven families, and New London is a slum anyway (I wonder which poster made THAT point). Plus this will keep the taxes lower on MY house.

It's because the essence of the Bill of Rights was to protect the individual from government, at ALL levels, that Justice Thomas got this right (Must maintain focus, I'm feeling dizzy after writing this for the second time, first time for the Marijuana case). It is a very sad day, at least for me, and undermines my faith in the US system.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I just thought that you'd be interested in the fact he was making an arguement similar to yours and using the current case as an example. (He went into why he disagreed with the decision though)

Well, its nice to see Will still has some valid arguements in his head.

I simply think he is absurd for saying he KNEW what the Framers thought.

[GePap]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc


Because often the majority is lazy , stupid, ill-informed or simply NIMBY - it's just eleven families, and New London is a slum anyway (I wonder which poster made THAT point). Plus this will keep the taxes lower on MY house.

It's because the essence of the Bill of Rights was to protect the individual from government, at ALL levels, that Justice Thomas got this right (Must maintain focus, I'm feeling dizzy after writing this for the second time, first time for the Marijuana case). It is a very sad day, at least for me, and undermines my faith in the US system.

Actually:

1. The Bill of Rights was meant by the founders to apply solely to the Federal Level, while states could continue to, for example, discriminate by religion by having official religions. Not until after the Civil War can you really say that applying the limits on Federal power should apply to state constitutions.

2. While I have said time and time again that I disagree with this opinion, I had an intersting arguement with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago about this very issue (he is a lawyer in HUD) and his point was that it was very hard to ever win an eminent domain case because the courst always give wide latitude to governments in their claims of eminent domain. He was right.

3. As Imran has stated, the owners will in theory be justly compensated-if property can equal money, in theory, by giving them the equivalent amount of money, you have not actually violated their property rights, as they still have their property, only in another form. I think MtG. is also correct in saying they could satill sue about the amount of compensation they will get.


And to the first point: If the first part is true, then you really have no hope and the American system is dead already, because a democracy simply can't continue if most of its members have lost faith or respect for it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap

After all, can't the public simply throw out of office those individuals who allow the feared corruption and nepotism? And if the public is so stupid or lazy or ill-informed to be incapable of, throught elections, making its will known to its representatives, then what exactly is wrong with some court activism here or there?

Problem being the damage might already be done before said throwing out can actually take place. Further a rather upstanding local POL who might have never evidenced any indciations of susceptibility to corruption when suddenly and for the first time being swayed by the $$$ of a developer might actually change his tune. Point being these local POLS by and large have never been put in temptations way. Their track record is by and large blank.