I don’t have the time to do this justice, so here is an e-mail I received recently, raw. And frankly, it’s pretty damned raw.
Friends:
Consider this fact: in just the past year, more than 5,700 properties nationwide have been threatened by or taken with eminent domain for private development – a figure that compares with more than 10,000 examples over a five-year period preceding the Kelo argument, according to one of five reports released today by the Institute for Justice (which argued the Kelo case before the U.S. Supreme Court) and the Castle Coalition. Coupled with this increase in eminent domain abuse, however, has been a virtually unprecedented grassroots and legislative response to the most universally despised Supreme Court ruling in recent memory.
Friday, June 23, is the one-year anniversary of the now-infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision that stripped Americans of any meaningful federal constitutional protection for their private property. To mark that date, the Institute for Justice and the Castle Coalition issued four separate reports yesterday that
1) document the growing problem of eminent domain for private development,
2) chronicle the legislative response to Kelo,
3) demonstrate failed redevelopments that followed government’s use of force to acquire property, and
4) expose the common myths put forward by developers and cities defending eminent domain for private use.In another document also released yesterday, the Castle Coalition offers property owners who face eminent domain abuse an “Eminent Domain Survival Guide.�
All are available at http://www.castlecoalition.org/kelo/index.html – check them out today!
Christina Walsh
Assistant Castle Coalition Coordinator
Institute for Justice
901 N. Glebe Road, Suite 900
Arlington, VA 22203
www.ij.org
www.castlecoalition.orgP.S. HELP THE CASTLE COALITION GROW! Forward this message to your friends. They can sign-up here: http://www.castlecoalition.org/join/index.html.
An average of 2,000 per year, to 5,700 — a 185% increase in ONE year. So much for Kelo “not having a major effect.”
Well, there are those places that responded with a backlash, and made that sort of thing much harder. Too bad that didn’t happen everywhere.
To summarize your lesson: your property rights are only as strong as your defense of them.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060623-10.html
***********
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 23, 2006
Executive Order: Protecting the Property Rights of the American People
After glancing through that, my reaction is three-fold:
1. Loopholes you could push a golf course through.
2. What presidents giveth, presidents can take away.
3. We’re supposed to be protected by the constitution, not the flimsy excuse of paper the president signed.
Are you familiar with the Australian film, The Castle? Worth a look. And not just because my uncle is in it. 😉
Nope, can’t say as I pay much attention to Hollywood, and the spillover hits foriegn media (with the exception of anime.)
Okay. The reason I mention it is because it is all about the applicability of eminent domain to private development, albeit in an Australian rather than American legal context. The Australian High Court comes off rather better in the film than the US Supreme Court did in Kelo.
Also, it’s a good film.
Yeah, I followed the link. Thanks for the pointer — maybe we need to import it and force-feed it to the SCOTUS.