Free Republic

For three decades, Andy Henry has declined $20-30 million offers for his 21-acre, 175-year-old farm. Ironically, local government is using his perseverance to take the entire property via eminent domain and replace pasture with affordable housing. Grass for concrete? Legacy surrendered? No deal, Henry says. Period. Full stop. On South River Road, in Middlesex County, N.J., warehouses and industrial buildings have replaced the once abundant farms of yesteryear—except a lone holdout. “My family sacrificed on this land for 175 years,” Henry adds. “All the other farms disappeared. We did not. We will not.” In 1850, Joseph McGill—Andy Henry’s maternal great-grandfather—bought...

Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85. Souter died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the Supreme Court said in a statement Friday. He retired from the court in June 2009, giving President Barack Obama his first Supreme Court vacancy to fill. Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice. Souter was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1990. He was a reliably liberal vote on abortion, church-state relations, freedom...

An Episcopal congregation here, after facing months of backlash from some neighbors in response to its proposal for a 17-bed homeless shelter, now has been targeted by ersey]the town for possible public seizure of the 11-acre church property through eminent domain. The congregation, Christ Episcopal Church, says the property is not for sale, yet the elected town council on April 30, during a raucous and contentious meeting, agreed to begin the process of buying or seizing the church and five other properties to create two new town parks. The Rev. Lisa A. Hoffman, Christ Church’s rector, said that a Toms...

It is simply wrong to let the government take one person’s property away in order to hand it to another private owner with more political power.’ An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices. It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency. It was...

Thousands of farmers are expected to drive tractors to The Hague, Netherlands, on Saturday morning to oppose the government’s plan to shut down 3,000 farms. The government made the move to comply with global warming goals despite a heavy vehicle ban the day before. It can be recalled that the Dutch government is planning to “buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to be in compliance with EU environmental rules” of the nitrate emission reduction plan. Thousands of farmers and the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion will hold a rally in The Hague, Netherlands on...

Judge Joe Brown reveals the origins and foundations of current legal attitudes concerning property, revealing that the basic concepts have roots that extend back to the days of Absolutism. As one who always carried the notion that our legal system grew out of the enlightenment and the writings of John Locke, I find his commentary startling and now wonder how much I need to readjust my layman's prior conception of the law.

A few miles off Interstate 270, in the heart of bustling Montgomery County, a once-thriving neighborhood has taken on the feel of a ghost town. Half the homes are vacant, their windows broken or boarded up. Driveways are strewed with debris. "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs dot trees. Banging sounds come from empty houses where burglars pry copper pipes from the walls. The culprit is not foreclosure but the imminent arrival of the six-lane intercounty connector that will slice through the Derwood neighborhood. This week, highway workers demolished a brick house and will soon raze five more on...

A New Brunswick court has ruled that Aboriginal title, or the legal means by which Indigenous people claim property, can be used on privately held land in the Canadian province if indigenous nations go through the government to do so. The court decided the ruling earlier this month and it may set the precedent of Aboriginal title being used to sweep up privately owned property. On November 14, Justice Kathryn Gregory of the Court of King’s Bench ruled in connection to a lawsuit made by six Wolastoqey Nations that sought Aboriginal title claims for over 50 percent of the land...

Rochester, N.Y.— People in Rochester's 19th Ward rallied Tuesday for the Good Cause Eviction law to be passed after they claim a tenant was served an "unjust eviction." Lakeisha Ward claims she was served an eviction notice after raising concerns about the property and taking the issues to the city. MORE:Rochester City Council says new eviction law would exclude 35,000 renters Ward said she's not behind on rent and kept up her rent. Torres Turn Key Property Management LLC said Ward was issued a notice to vacate because the owner has different plans for the property. "I have emails saying...

Trouble is brewing for Eighty Eight Coffee Co. in Manchester, New Hampshire. The local restaurant and coffee shop is a popular spot for students and residents alike, but the city is trying to take ownership of the property for a sewer project through eminent domain. "My parents have owned the property since ’99," Corey Tong, one of the owners of the coffee shop, told CBS News Boston. "In 2023, they reached out to us to say they wanted this property as part of the Cemetery Drain Brook Tunnel." According to the city, the Cemetery Brook Drain Tunnel Project includes construction...

After years of maintaining County Road 505, Natrona County officials sued local landowners when they threatened to block off the road. Turns out, the county doesn't even own the road -- the landowners do. Both sides were in front of a judge Wednesday. Gravel trucks were using County Road 505 on June 18, 2024, to haul gravel to the BLM project on Muddy Mountain. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) CASPER — Determining who owns County Road 505 and a frustrated landowner’s threat to block it off landed in a Natrona County courtroom Wednesday. Natrona County is asking for an injunction...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got a chilly reception at the nation’s highest court this month, when his office argued against Texas ranchers who were seeking compensation from the state over a Fifth Amendment takings clause issue. The Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit public interest law firm, represented rancher Richie DeVillier in the litigation, who sued after his ranch was repeatedly flooded by a new median wall built by Texas officials along a highway just to the south of his property, which ended up functioning like a dam during hurricanes and other periods of heavy rain. The Fifth Amendment...

A Proclamation on the Death of Sandra Day O’Connor Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was an American icon, the first woman on our Nation’s highest court. She spent her career committed to the stable center, pragmatic and in search of common ground. Defined by her no-nonsense Arizona ranch roots, Justice O’Connor overcame discrimination early on, at a time when law firms too often told women to seek work as secretaries, not attorneys. She gave her life to public service, even holding elected office, and never forgot those ties to the people whom the law is meant to serve. She sought to...

The dream of net-zero carbon emissions—and its vision of blanketing hundreds of millions of acres of American land with wind turbines and solar panels—is running up against the reality that most of the land in America is still privately owned and many Americans don’t want these massive industrial installations near their homes. But that may prove to be a temporary impediment. “There is a major effort under the Biden administration to consolidate power over land and resources, because whoever owns the land and resources of a nation, controls the people,” Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a...

An Alabama woman is being kicked out of her longtime home as investors are looking to buy the 40-acre plot from her family, which could be worth upwards of $20 million. Corine Woodson, 84, has been living in the same house on the outskirts of Auburn for over 60 years and is forced to leave the residence because the house sits on land with shared ownership throughout her family. “I would like to ask them why. You know, why, but I don’t. I can’t figure it out. Thinking about it, wondering about it. It’s not easy. I can tell you...

Farmers in South Dakota are facing egregious intimidation tactics by a private company that wants to use eminent domain to confiscate valuable farmland for carbon-capture pipelines.Summit Carbon Solutions requested a restraining order against Brown County farmer Jerad Bossly. The company claims he threatened the lives of its representatives who showed up unannounced to survey his property, a farm that has been in his family for four generations. He told The New American that when they arrived, he was about 12 miles away, working in a field. His wife was home, recovering from gallbladder surgery, and was taking a shower when...

A few weeks ago, 42-year-old Jared Bossly ventured out into his farm to plant alfalfa. Bossly’s farm in Brown County, South Dakota has been owned by his family for four generations. They grow corn, beans, and alfalfa in addition to raising cattle. They also plant trees all over the property as a windbreak to protect the herd. Bossley has put his entire life into his work, and has passed those values along to his children. He and his 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son work on the farm daily to do the right things for the land. Every spare penny the...

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the government may need to seize private property to advance clean energy initiatives. Dimon discussed the need to quickly begin investing in solar projects and other green initiatives and suggested that the government should use eminent domain to seize property for those projects. “At the same time, permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. We may even need to evoke [sic] eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar,...

Activists are upset that the Bruce family, which received oceanfront property last year that was unjustly taken from its forebears by the government, has now sold it back to Los Angeles County for $20 million. As Breitbart News reported in 2021, the story of the Bruce family was a compelling case for restitution: The owners, Willa and Charles Bruce, purchased the land in 1912 and created a beach resort catering to black clients before the city used eminent domain to seize the property. The land was dormant for decades until the city built a park in 1960 and later renamed...

Decades-long mantras about “vanishing habitat” and ever-growing threats to wildlife have long been used to justify locking up more land through federal ownership or other restrictive measures. The perfect example is the Biden administration’s proposal to conserve 30% of the nation by 2030—aka “30 by 30.” Exactly what the administration envisions is ambiguous, as it hasn’t defined words like “conserve” and “protect,” although insiders at the Department of the Interior say the 30% language is being incorporated into many Interior Department documents.