http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain




I have only recently become aware of this power as i was reading the newspaper today. Basically it is saying that the government can seize your property and evict you in order to build something that would be for the greater good of the community, such as increased tax revenues. This story relates to the New Jersey Nets basketball team wanting to build a new stadium in Brooklyn along Atlantic Avenue. They want to evict all the people living there (compensation is reasonable market value for their homes) so they can cash in. I mean these people get a proper price for their homes, but what if they do not want to move?

Here is an example in New London, Conneticut where the Conn. Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of the developers. Also there is a list of places where eminent domain was used throughout the country.

http://www.ij.org/media/private_property/c...kgrounder.shtml


Questions for Debate:

1) Is eminent domain constitutional?

2) Do you believe there are circumstances where eminent domain does contribute to the 'greater good' of the town, city, or state?

3) If you believe it to be unconstitutional, can you believe that such a blatant violation of the 5th amendment has been allowed to go on for so long without question?

Good Topic Led,

I think the Constitution clearly states:



That if a citizen is duly compensated, the gov't has every right to take anyone's land. That said, I don't agree with it, and I really think that it should only be done in extreme circumstances. A new playground for the Nets (corporate welfare, BTW), does not qualify.

I think areas of geographic, historical, or natural significance (Read: One of a Kind), should qualify for this practice. For instance, someone who owns land where they discover.. I dunno a ton of Dinosaurs, should probably be bought up by the government.

I really don't believe this kind of practice should be used for commercial developments at all. And I don't see a need for this to be done with Government infrastructure, which could just as easily be setup in a commerical zone.

I'd really be interested to see what would happen if they tried to do this to the headquarters of McDonald's! This is clearly a case of picking on the "little guy" and could maybe blow up in their face if enough angry residents put together a solid class-action.

1) Sure, as long as just compensation is made. That's the first arguing point -- what is just compensation and who determines it?

2) Yes, I believe circumstances have and do continue to exist that meet these criteria. How do you suppose city highways get built? And again, this is an arguing point. It explains why some city highways are a real mess.

3) Eminent domain has been questioned plenty of times. Most recent in memory had to do with tearing down a neighborhood for a hospital parking lot. The hospital lost that battle.

The point is that eminent domain isn't an automatic penalty on the current landowner. City hall can be fought successfully, especially when lots of people band together. Doing an individual fight is less likely to be successful.

There's also the possibility of good old boy deals that involve high payments for worthless land, never to be developed. That's a corruption of the spirit of eminent domain.

And what is that spirit? We should do good by our communities, not stand in the way of improvements by using an absolutist idea of property rights. Which is fine by me as long as the compensation is just, and there we get back to the first point of argument.

My just compensation is probably a higher figure than the government's.

1) Is eminent domain constitutional?
Yes it is constitutional, but are all the uses constitutional? I do not believe that taking of property to then sell and/or give to another private individual or corporation is constitutional.

2) Do you believe there are circumstances where eminent domain does contribute to the 'greater good' of the town, city, or state?
I guess it would depend on the "greater good". If the government is building a school, road, park, or some other government owned property then even if I do not care for it, yes it is to the greater good. If it means that somebody that wants the property to generate greater taxes revenue, etc. heck no.

3) If you believe it to be unconstitutional, can you believe that such a blatant violation of the 5th amendment has been allowed to go on for so long without question?
It is constitutional within guidelines, but when the eminent domain is abused, it is to be questioned.

1) Is eminent domain constitutional?
Clearly, since your quote of the 5th Amendment says it is. Only your selective emboldening indicates it migth not be. Try this:

I've left the "without due process of law" emboldened also, as I read it that just compensation isn't what the buyer (the government, at whatever level) or the seller (John Q Public) thinks is just, but what a court thinks is just.

I'm not sure how it actually works in practice, but I would say that, in principle, the government should have to justify it's desired "eminent domain" (in the UK we call them Compulsory Purchase Orders) to a court, which could be contested by the land owner. The court should decide whether the purchase will go ahead, and if so, what a fair rate of compensation would be, which would be binding on both parties (subject to the usual levels of appeal on both sides).

To make things a little fairer, as well as just, I think the State should pay the costs for both sides, since why should JQP pay lawyers to be allowed to keep (or to lose) his own land? This might also act as a deterrent against over-ambitious city, county, state or national government departments buying up land willy-nilly.

2) Do you believe there are circumstances where eminent domain does contribute to the 'greater good' of the town, city, or state?
As has been said land for roads, railways, tramlines, & anything else has to come from somewhere, and the man who owns the land between points A and B may not want to sell.

Private land could even be turned into a patch of waste ground, if it could be jusified in court as outlined above, and the current owner justly compensated, and still be entirely 100% constitutional.

Indeed, there is nothing in the wording of the 5th to stop government from buying up land cheaply, making it attractive to developers through tax breaks or what-have-you, then selling it on for big profits. The public good might be said to be served by this, if it meant lower taxes, mightn't it?

3) If you believe it to be unconstitutional, can you believe that such a blatant violation of the 5th amendment has been allowed to go on for so long without question?
I don't, since the 5th clearly and explicitly permits such activity, subject to "just compensation".

Please note, I am not saying that any of the extremes I've used for illustration are a Good Thing. I am just saying that none of them seem to be remotely unconstitutional, except perhaps in spirit. And if they do contradcit the spirit, they certainly don't contradict the text, which is (unfortunately) all you have to go on.

1) Is eminent domain constitutional?
Clearly it is, as stated in the constitution and court rulings throughout the years. In essence, it reads, whenever lands in a State are needed for a public purpose, Congress may authorize that they be taken, either by proceedings in the courts of the State, with its consent, or by proceedings in the courts of the United States, with or without any consent or concurrent act of the State.
Now the conflict comes when 'public purpose' is defined by commercial interests. In my town, we just had an eminent domain case go to court when the city council planned to seize land in a low property tax area in order to allow a conglomeration to build a Super Walmart shopping complex.
The homeowners eventually sold to the company, but it was seen by citizens as a tragic misuse of government power. The city council all but admitted that the overwhelming reason for the use of eminent domain was to garner higher property taxes than was being brought in by the poor homeowners.

If governments can abuse the concept of eminent domain in this manner then your private property rights are virtually non-existent. You own your home only so long as the local politicians tolerate that ownership. Let some developer come along with a better idea, and you can kiss your dirt goodbye.

This is a key area that I wish the Libertarian party would make a primary plank in their platform. Too many people think of the party as 'the legalize drugs party' and are turned off. If they would publicize the many eminent domain abuses that occur daily around the country, and emphasize how it could happen to you, it would certainly get peoples attention.

Freedom means little without property rights. What good is your freedom to use your talents and your willingness to work hard to acquire wealth if your rights to that wealth can be denied at the whim of a few politicians?

Two great websites that detail abuse are
the Castle Coalition and the Institute for Justice.

Yes, its constitutional, per your quotation of the 5th amendment. ED has been used for both good (wetlands protection, interstate commerce, etc) and evil(take a pick) for a very long time. The example you give of the Nets arena I believe to be an abuse of Eminent Domain authority.

Unfortunately, nothing in the 5th amendment speaks to cause. "Public use" is sufficiently vague to pretty much allow the goverment to claim eminent domain whenever it wishes. An example of such abuses for economic development is found here.



Note in this example, there seems to be little use of the term public in the seizure. This is private business vs. private business.

So to answer your question Leder, I don't think its unconstitutional, but I think cities desires for "re-development" have turned eminint domain into a tool for private enterprise as opposed to its original intent, to serve public use.

Doc

Well, I have some interesting ideas about land.
First off, these are clearly abuses of ED, and should be fought.

I see property taxes (assessed on land) as the fee you pay government to protect your right to keep using your land. [I see property taxes assessed against buildings as probably violating the 5th]

Were states & localities to gradually shift from property taxes on built property, personal property, as well as income and sales taxes to a property tax assessed against the land/location value only, this problem would largely be alleviated. 1st) Individual property owners would tend to build to take advantage of the site value increasing the compensation required and 2) the marginal difference in tax rates between two adjacent sites would be small, discouraging government from making land grabs to foster development.

First, Lederuvdapac, welcome to the world of of the real.

Eminent Domain, is indeed, Constitutional. The problem of course, is that the interpretation has, like with a lot of other things, been distorted and twisted over the years. Now, it's just another form of "corporate welfare", doled out by counties and cities to increase their tax revenues.

Eminent Domain was intended to be used for being able to build roads, schools, and the like, where public use of the property could be seen as a greater good over the single individual's property rights. A fair market assessment of the property would be determined by real estate appraisal, and the government would condemn the land, and pay the former landowner this market value, so they could then purchase property elsewhere.

No longer. Now local governments claim that adding to their coffers is "public use", and happily condemn one person's private property to give to someone else, because the second person claims he can make more money there.

The first really abusive case of this nature happened in the 1980's in a place called Poletown, Michigan. I found this on a pro Ralph Nader website:



This court ruling basically set the precedent for all of the other abuses to come. Some of the more blatant cases that have been fought in recent years can be found on the Castle Coalition website, an organization devoted to fighting these kinds of abuse:

* Removing an entire neighborhood and the condemnation of homes for a privately owned and operated office park to complement a nearby Pfizer facility in New London, Connecticut.

* Approving the condemnation of more than 1,700 buildings and the dislocation of more than 5,000 residents for private commercial and industrial development in Riviera Beach, Florida.

* A government agency collecting a $56,500 bounty for condemning land in East St. Louis, Illinois, to give to a neighboring racetrack for parking.

* Replacing a less-expensive car dealership with a BMW dealership in Merriam, Kansas.

* A Boston apartment owner has the city condemn his own building allowing him break his leases so that the property could be used for a new luxury hotel.

* Seizing the homes of elderly homeowners in Mississippi and forcing them and their extended families to move, in order to transfer the land to Nissan for a new, privately owned car manufacturing plant, despite the fact that the land is not even needed for the project.

* Taking the building of an elderly widow for casino parking in Las Vegas, claiming it was blighted but without ever even looking at the building. This case was recently decided in the State Supreme Court in favor of the widow.

* Improperly denying building permits to a church in New Cassel, New York, then condemning the property for private retail as soon as it looked like the church would begin construction.

* Condemning 83 homes for a new Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, that promised to bring jobs but ended up employing less than half the projected number because it is fully automated.

* Forcing two families (along with their neighbors) to move for a private mall expansion in Hurst, Texas, while their spouses were dying of cancer.

Most of the larger private concerns no longer bother with trying to buy out property owners any longer. They simply make friends with the local governments in the way of campaign contributions, and then have those governments do their dirty work for them. Corporations like Walmart, Costco, and others use these tactics all the time to get their hands on property they would otherwise never be able to buy.

The good news? There are enough people fighting back, and winning, that the tide may be turning somewhat. In fact, the Michigan Supreme Court, in July of this year, overturned it's own ruling on Poletown, when their decision was challenged during another eminent domain battle that reached their bench.

Most people just can't afford to "fight city hall" on this, because the legal fees can be astronomical. However, everytime this kind of abuse happens locally, everyone in town should be screaming at their local politicians to return eminent domain to the purposes for which it was originally intended.