No sooner did Todd Epp join a law firm than he subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and find himself barking along with all of us other running dog lackeys of the ruling class. I say welcome aboard! Todd blogs about the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision. Here is how Todd describes it:
Today, the WSJ has two articles looking at the second anniversary of the Kelo case that upheld the use of eminent domain statutes to comdemn land for economic development purposes, not just for public projects like roads, schools, and the like.
While I’m not a big “property rights” uber alles nut—I think people should have superior rights to property—I also don’t think the government—any governnment—should be in the business of using the law to help crony capitalists. In Kelo, the project that the Supremes upheld was essentially state sanctioned class warfare, with the rich getting their way over the poor.
Now I think I agree with everything Todd says there. Government can clearly seize private property for public purposes. The question in Kelo was whether they can, under the Constitution, seize it to promote economic development, which in this case meant giving or selling it to private developers. The Court said yes, and unlike most conservatives, I think the Court was right. How to use the power of eminent domain is a policy question, and best left to legislatures that can be held accountable at the polling place. If the Court had held that the Kelo seizures were unconstitutional, that would have meant the courts would have to sort out a lot of ambiguous eminent domain cases, and they would inevitably have approved those they liked and struck down those they disliked. I prefer the arbitrary rule of legislatures to that of small, unelected courts.
As a policy matter I agree with Todd, and I think he points out the right remedy. Seizing the houses of women living of social security and giving it to real estate developers is not usually social progress. It is up to state legislatures to legislate sufficient protections for property rights. Perhaps this is one issue on which libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives like myself can make common cause with Eppian progressives.
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