Posted on 02/21/2006 9:45:20 AM PST by presidio9
In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.
The measures are in direct response to the United States Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last June in a landmark property rights case from Connecticut, upholding the authority of the City of New London to condemn homes in an aging neighborhood to make way for a private development of offices, condominiums and a hotel. It was a decision that one justice, who had written for the majority, later all but apologized for.
The reaction from the states was swift and heated. Within weeks of the court's decision, Texas, Alabama and Delaware passed bills by overwhelming bipartisan margins limiting the right of local governments to seize property and turn it over to private developers. Since then, lawmakers in three dozen other states have proposed similar restrictions and more are on the way, according to experts who track the issue.
The National League of Cities, which supports the use of eminent domain as what it calls a necessary tool of urban development, has identified the issue as the most crucial facing local governments this year. The league has called upon mayors and other local officials to lobby Congress and state legislators to try to stop the avalanche of bills to limit the power of government to take private property for presumed public good.
The issue is not whether governments can condemn private property to build a public amenity like a road, a school or a sewage treatment plant. That power is explicit in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, provided that "just compensation" is
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So which states are the holdouts?
Any States who DON'T block that SC judicial travesty can be assumed to be officially communist-ruled.
I hate Eminent Domain. I believe it is abuse of power.
Once again, the New York Times makes the mistaken assumption that governments have "rights," rather than "powers."
Conservatives have to realize that as we get a Supreme Court that is less inclined to overturn State laws, we are going to have to set up shop at the State level to get the laws passed that we want governing our areas. Our justices are not activists; rather they will defer to the states by not inventing and inserting Federal meaning into the constitution as the Left has done. That means, with a favorable Supreme Court decision, the work of conservatives has only begun.
Good strategic thinking, I believe you are correct.
read later
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