ick....and 6-3 as well.
We really need 2 new conservatives on that court.
Eminent domain was not intended for Wal-Mart.
Oh...oops.
It is actually 5-4. I guess the SCOTUS blog was wrong.
Well, we still need ONE new conservative on the court, and two would be really helpful.
Quoting his dissent:
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 134135 (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 910 (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 OConnor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, at 12, 813. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Courts error runs deeper than this. Todays 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 governments eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clauses original meaning, and I would reconsider them.