Really? It has always? I'm sure you can provide the precendents, then? So, please do educate all of us, Ms. O'Connor*, when has eminent domain ever been used in the 18th or 19th centuries to benefit a private citizen for no public good other than a supposed increase in tax revenue? Even if the wording of the Constitution is ambiguous, the practice is not. It is quite plain that the founding fathers considered the unjust siezure of private property both contemptible and destructive of freedom.The takings clause is ambiguous because it was inserted as a direct limitation upon Congress and not local govt. There was no issue when the takings clause addressed only Congress because Congress had such limited powers to exercise the taking of private property under the constitution, unlike State govts.
Every thing in the first 8 amendments is going to be ambigious because they were written for limitations of Congress, not State govts. When Madison attempted to offer a Bill of Rights for both Congress and the States it was rejected because no one wanted Congress with any jurisdiction to legislate anything within the States.
It is up to the citizens to define their own laws what constitutes public works, the Supreme Court can only insure that just compensation has been offered.
>> It is up to the citizens to define their own laws what constitutes public works, the Supreme Court can only insure that just compensation has been offered. <<
No, actually, it's not. Rights are inherent, and are not CREATED by government. Rather, their existence is merely RECOGNIZED by government. Further, a deed of ownership is a legal contract, authorized by the state, and existant in state law, that gives the holder the right to decide the conditions under which he will relinquish that ownership.
The takings clause is not relevant because it establishes that a right to ownership exists. Rather, it is relevant because it establishes that there is a limit to the absoluteness of that right. And indeed, such a limit was observed in the practice of law. The colonies, however, were upset that the right had not been properly recognized by the King, and so, when they created their government, they added a point of clarification to correct the King's failure to recognize the right, so that their government would not.
The onus, therefore, is not on the part of the owners to prove that their continued ownership is guaranteed in law; the onus is on the state to demonstrate that there existed a limitation to the right of ownership which had previously been recognized.
My assertion is that the historical record suggests that the authority of eminent domain, as practiced by New London, is a novel assertion of an authority. I challenge you to demonstrate that the authority of eminent domain had ever been recognized as the ability to take over land merely on the basis that another potential landowner might generate more tax revenue.