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I hate to do this, because I can tell you are very angry about this law of the Supreme Court's, and that you think it is something new and abominable and against the US Constitution and American tradition.

I agree with you that the law is terrible, and that Americans should be protected in their homes, that they should have a separate law for homes and private life, and that homes are different than all other property. Perhaps the government should be able to as easily take away commercial property to increase tax revenues, so long as it pays fair compensation. Govermment keeps close tabs on business, and "fair" is a relatively objective standard there. Also, it is just business. But when you move to people's houses, it is just a different thing. Even bankruptcy law recognizes that some artifacts are simply different, not property. The bank can take away your furniture and your house, but it cannot take away your wedding ring because your wedding ring, although objectively just a lump of gold, is subjectively something much more emotionally important than that. And even US law of bankruptcy, which is not kind at the liquidation, decides that the emotional value of the wedding ring outweighs the rights of creditors to get their money.
I believe that the appropriate standard is that houses are different, and should not be able to be taken away by eminent domain at all, unless there is a compelling government purpose having to do with health or safety. I don't think that houses should be able to be pulled down even for roads. But that is my view. French law is not very far off of that. Certainly the government can take land, and pay for it, for government purposes, but government purposes does not mean to give to any developer. And when it comes to homes, it is very slow and careful. It is not easy to take a house, because a house is a different thing and everybody everywhere in the world KNOWS that.
American law refuses to recognize any difference, and in this I think it is brutal and wrong. That's what I think.

Now, here is the part that you will not like.
You think that what the Supreme Court has done is not in keeping with American law or history. But I think that, sadly, you are very wrong.

There are a few pillars of American law.
The first is the Common Law of England. Americans, especially those trained as lawyers (I was trained as an American lawyer) love their Common Law. They believe it is much superior to the Civil Law in every way. They are proud and even nationalistic about it.
Under the Common Law, all land belongs to the King. All of it. Nobody ever owns it. The King grants a fief in it, a "fee" in the old term. And "fee simple absolute" was the highest fief there was. This was inheritable, devisable, and could be sold. But it is still a fief. Nobody else can take it from you, but in the Common Law, the king always could take it from you. Historically, the King took the land, even in fee, from those designated traitors to the Crown. The traitor was tortured to death, and his land was taken. His heirs were all disinherited, and their relation to the traitor was deemed to give them a criminality: attainder of the blood.
That IS the Common Law of England, the old Common Law.

Now, that was modified, especially in the English Revolution, to make sure that if the Crown took land held in fee, it had to PAY the landowner for it some value.

Inherited criminal tainting of the blood remained a part of the Common Law, and was only removed in America by the particular clause in the US Constitution that says that Congress shall pass no bill of attainder. But the Common Law of England, except as modified by the US Constitution or US statutory law, is the law of America.

When the English grandees decided that they could operate agricultural land at a great profit, the Enclosure Acts were passed, which allowed small landholders and tenants to all be driven off the property and large estates to be formed. These tenants did have rights of various sorts in the property, but these were all overridden by eminent domain. Those people were left in penury, and it was quite intentional: penurious farmers stripped of their land were easily reduced to dirt cheap wage laborers or forced into the military ranks.
The Common Law was extremely brutal in this regard, and it was the Enclosure Acts that provided the impetus for England's first great capital rise, and also for her larger-than-normal military capacity. Social unrest was siphoned off to the colonies.

Nothing like this was even possible under Civil Law, where land ownership was absolute.

Now, quite honestly, Americans are very proud of their Common Law, but I think they should not be. The Common Law was the law of aristocracy, English aristocracy, which was purposely used to impoverish the English peasantry, drive them off the land, and create security forces large enough to be able to suppress any sort of revolt. Beaten in this way, but able to win foreign wars more easily, the English had a sort of pride come out of it. But the actual historical facts of the Common Law of land takings is brutal, disgusting and immoral. There is nothing to be proud about at all in this aspect of the Common Law tradition.

It was imported into America and became part of the American Common Law tradition. The first great victims of it were the American Indians, who were essentially driven, by a harsh form of eminent domain, onto reservations. "Fair compensation" was paid in the form of treaty promises, but of course the Indians had no power, and could not enforce the rights, and were paid almost nothing. It is a Common Law saying "No remedy, no right", which means that whatever a paper says, if there is no way to enforce it at law, the right does not REALLY exist.

That is the American Law Tradition, brought over from England.

Americans are superstitious about their Constitution, practically treating the document as second to the King James Bible in holiness. But Americans bemoan all the time that "the Constitution is not respected". The Common Law tradition of America, of which Americans are so fiercely proud, has been for a thousand years "No remedy, no right." If the Constitution says you have a right, on that piece of paper, but you cannot enforce the right, and there is no court or authority that you can go to to make good the right, then the right does not in fact exist at all, according to the ancient legal tradition of the United States and England.

When I point this out to people, they characteristically become infuriated at me, because what I am saying is that the sacred US Constitution is, in fact, seriously flawed and aspects of it have no force at all, and the Common Law itself is pretty cruel and not entirely admirable in important parts.

These two things come together to a tee on the land takings issue.

What the Supreme Court did is to say that government can treat you like an Indian. You are individually weak and powerless. You have no bargaining power. A document says that you have some rights to be treated "fairly", but "fair" is as determined by the authorities taking from you. The Americans did not just TAKE the land from the Indians. They negotiated treaties. This was a genuflection to the belief that, to be "fair" there must be "process". In other words, if I write it down on paper, and you sign it, and I rip you off and oppress you by the terms of that paper, I am not guilty of anything (even if the difference in power between us forced you to sign the paper), and you were a fool for giving up your rights. The government does not just TAKE the land from you using eminent domain. It negotiates a treaty with you, in which it dictates the terms, you are forced to accept them, and then everyone else, enamoured as they are with the American system and Common Law, will close ranks and say "He was given due process, the law is respected, he has nothing to complain about."

And if you DO complain anyway, you're a crank. A whack job. Nobody will support you, because you complaint really is that the Common Law is BAD, fundamentally EVIL, and that the US Constitution isn't worth anything to protect you against this...in other words, there's something wrong with the Constitution that this could happen to you.

Americans will not admit that there is anything wrong with their Constitution. It's like saying there's something wrong with the Bible, as far as they are concerned. They will not acknowledge that the ancient Common Law was really pretty oppressive and atrocious. It is "tradition" and therefore good.

What the Supreme Court has done to individual landholders is put them in the position of Indians in the 1800s. They have rights, theoretically, but no remedies when they get screwed (which means, according to the Common Law tradition, that they actualy DON'T have any rights).
The majority of people didn't care about the Indians then, and still don't. And since the majority of people's houses won't be taken now either, the modern Indians who get screwed, maybe YOU, won't get enough sympathy to give them any justice either.

The flaw lies in the Common Law itself, and in the US Constitution itself. What is being done is completely in line with US history and tradition, sadly. The problem is not that the Common Law tradition and US Constitution are not being followed. That's a dodge. The problem is that they ARE, and the outcome is BAD.

But those things cannot be said in America without being stoned alive, as we are about to see.