Kelo v. New London

Of all the rights we as Americans enjoy, the three most basic ones, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, are "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." That third right, the pursuit of happiness, is maybe the most important of the three because it states that every individual has a right to own and enjoy their own private property and the fruits of their labor. As the founders believed, this right was the surest and often only way to defend the individual from the power of government or an overbearing establishment. Furthermore, the right of sovereignty over one's private property was part of nature's law and it was government’s purpose to defend and protect that right. Yet this basic principle in our nation’s founding was turned on it’s head in the Supreme Court’s ruling this week in Kelo v. New London, a ruling that dictates government has an almost all encompassing right to seize and transfer personal property to whomever it pleases.

The court’s rationale in this case is an appalling expansion and reshaping of the Takings Clause in the 5th amendment from it’s original and intended meaning. As the clause states, private property may not be taken by government unless it is for "public use", and not without "just compensation". As Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent, public use means "that either the government or it’s citizens as a whole must actually ‘employ’ the taken property", i.e. the property must be used for public services such as roads, bridges, etc. In other words, the Takings Clause allows government to take private property only in the above circumstances and prohibits it from taking it for anything else. However for some unexplained reason the majority of justices didn’t see it this way, instead stretching the term "public use" to mean anything that might serve the public purpose or interest. According to the court, government can now seize any piece of private property so long as, as the WSJ put it, "they can plausibly argue that any kind of public interest will be served." This is a blatant government land grab, for now government can remove anyone from their private property, no matter how long they’ve owned it or worked for it, and give it to another private entity so long as that private entity can provide a greater tax revenue and as Justice Thomas stated, "a vague promise of new jobs". Struck by this, Justice Scalia cynically asked during oral arguments, "[y]ou can take from A and give to B if B pays more taxes?"

In two consecutive weeks now the Supreme Court has stretched the original definition of the constitution to absurd and troubling degrees, last week in it’s ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, and this week in Kelo v. New London. Both decisions have resulted in government, both local and national, receiving expanded and excessive power, and both have struck large blows to the Federalist principles of this country. What we are increasingly left with is a government that is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers and one that no longer represents what our founding fathers had labored so hard to create.

Hat Tip: George Will, Opinion Journal, Powerline, UShistory.org