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DPChallenge Forums >> Rant >> Supreme Court:: Cities May Seize Your Home!
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 06/23/2005 12:34:23 PM · #1
//www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/23/scotus.property.ap/index.html

Thursday, June 23, 2005; Posted: 10:50 a.m. EDT (14:50 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses -- even against their will -- for private economic development. Continue reading...

This Washingtonpost story has more information though I did not see details about compensation.
//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062300783.html

Message edited by author 2005-06-23 15:47:16.
 06/23/2005 12:40:42 PM · #2
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


I like how you include this part.
 06/23/2005 12:45:27 PM · #3
I was going to say something as well...that was kind of ironic.
 06/23/2005 01:12:23 PM · #4
Yeah I have a comment:

Ginsburg
Kennedy
Souter
Breyer
Stevens

I guess we can get OFF Bush being bad for the country now?
 06/23/2005 01:22:43 PM · #5
I'm not saying that expropriation is right in the context stated or otherwise and I only skimmed the article but what type of compensation do the home owners get? Is that now up to the local authorities?
 06/23/2005 01:25:53 PM · #6
I'm really embarrased to be an American lately.
 06/23/2005 01:35:35 PM · #7
This Washingtonpost story has more information though I did not see details about compensation.

//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062300783.html
 06/23/2005 01:48:57 PM · #8
Emmenit Domain has always been rule of law. I see no difference in this as someome group telling some land owner that he can't build on his land becasue of some stupid bird that has a nest in a tree....
 06/23/2005 01:56:04 PM · #9
Originally posted by gwphoto:
Emmenit Domain has always been rule of law. I see no difference in this as someome group telling some land owner that he can't build on his land becasue of some stupid bird that has a nest in a tree....


The difference is huge.

There is a big difference between not being able to build new on a piece of land, and having YOUR land taken from you.

Case in point, a couple in their 80's living in Connecticut in a home that has been in their family for over 100 years, are going to be forcibly moved.
 06/23/2005 02:19:26 PM · #10
That's pretty appalling. This, from the dissent, says it all:

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O'Connor wrote that the majority's decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public -- in the process."

The effect of the decision, O'Connor said, "is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property -- and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

The ruling has broad potential implications nationwide, giving cities wider authority to condemn homes and businesses to make way for more lucrative developments.

Robt.
 06/23/2005 02:30:06 PM · #11
judicial tyranny
 06/23/2005 02:34:05 PM · #12
Originally posted by mavrik:
Yeah I have a comment:

Ginsburg
Kennedy
Souter
Breyer
Stevens

I guess we can get OFF Bush being bad for the country now?


Breyer and Ginsburg were Bill Clinton appointments to the Supreme Court ... and siding with big business against the rights of the individual? Hmmm ... hopefully this action will put to rest the fiction perpetuated by liberals that their core leadership are untouched by special interest.
 06/23/2005 03:24:25 PM · #13
Originally posted by RonBeam:
Originally posted by mavrik:
Yeah I have a comment:

Ginsburg
Kennedy
Souter
Breyer
Stevens

I guess we can get OFF Bush being bad for the country now?


Breyer and Ginsburg were Bill Clinton appointments to the Supreme Court ... and siding with big business against the rights of the individual? Hmmm ... hopefully this action will put to rest the fiction perpetuated by liberals that their core leadership are untouched by special interest.


Supreme Court Justices = core party leadership? Since when?

R.


06/23/2005 03:31:53 PM · #14
Can we keep partisan bullshit out of this? This is far bigger than a partisan spitting contest and minimalising it to that is exactly what our leaders want us to do, stay stupid and stay disorganized.

Plain and simple, this is yet another chip away at our constitutional rights by our government against us. Again the US government takes the side of big business instead of the people.
06/23/2005 03:33:27 PM · #15
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Can we keep partisan bullshit out of this? This is far bigger than a partisan spitting contest and minimalising it to that is exactly what our leaders want us to do, stay stupid and stay disorganized.

Plain and simple, this is yet another chip away at our constitutional rights by our government against us. Again the US government takes the side of big business instead of the people.


Amen! This is a very scary ruling, the more so since the "liberal" justices are supporting it.

R.
 06/23/2005 03:34:08 PM · #16
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Can we keep partisan bullshit out of this? This is far bigger than a partisan spitting contest and minimalising it to that is exactly what our leaders want us to do, stay stupid and stay disorganized.

Plain and simple, this is yet another chip away at our constitutional rights by our government against us. Again the US government takes the side of big business instead of the people.


I missed where you mentioned your suggested course of action.
 06/23/2005 03:38:58 PM · #17
Originally posted by mk:
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Can we keep partisan bullshit out of this? This is far bigger than a partisan spitting contest and minimalising it to that is exactly what our leaders want us to do, stay stupid and stay disorganized.

Plain and simple, this is yet another chip away at our constitutional rights by our government against us. Again the US government takes the side of big business instead of the people.


I missed where you mentioned your suggested course of action.


Probably because I don’t really know what to do about this. Other than try and organize people to get in the streets and protest, but that doesn’t really work anymore with the "free speech zones" and what not. We could try and boycott the businesses we don’t agree with but that does not work; most Americans are too distracted and don't care enough to follow through

I do know that I can try and make as many people aware of this issue as possible. The more people who are aware, the more chance for change.
06/23/2005 03:40:08 PM · #18
Originally posted by mk:
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Can we keep partisan bullshit out of this? This is far bigger than a partisan spitting contest and minimalising it to that is exactly what our leaders want us to do, stay stupid and stay disorganized.

Plain and simple, this is yet another chip away at our constitutional rights by our government against us. Again the US government takes the side of big business instead of the people.


I missed where you mentioned your suggested course of action.


That's the scary part. What can we do? The Supremes are in for life, and we didn't vote them in. We count on them to defend the fundamental rights our constitution is supposed to ensure we retain. Freedom from arbitrary seizure of property is extremely fundamental. To allow states and municipalities free rein to determine what's in "our" best interests with barely a nod to the constitutional guarantee that we own belongs to us, is to chip away at the very foundations of our national identity. This used to be a country where the indvidual mattered.

Robt.
 06/23/2005 05:35:27 PM · #19
Originally posted by bear_music:

Supreme Court Justices = core party leadership? Since when?

R.


If you do not think political agendas are fostered through the judicial branch, you are being extremely naive.
 06/23/2005 05:56:24 PM · #20
Originally posted by RonBeam:
If you do not think political agendas are fostered through the judicial branch, you are being extremely naive.


Ron,
I did not make the original comment, but I'll try to express my view on this situation:
it is not the question whether justices are influenced with political parties or whether they pursue someone's agenda or not. First, I consider these people extremely intelligent, and highly unlikely to be persuaded by the same propaganda that the public is curtained with on a daily basis.

The bigger problem here is labeling. The people are too lazy to think for themselves (most people, not all, but these that do think for themselves are either creating this atmosphere or not powerful enough to do anything).
That is why (I think) Rob wanted to warn us here: do not assign a label to someone/something. Liberal, democratic, republican. neoconservative etc. You or someone else assign someone or something this label for ease of discussion. Look at Saj's comments in that other thread on G8 and environment - it has lost any meaning, as it is not discussing the environment, but how one group is better/worse than another because that's what abcs (put your label here) do.

As long as majority of people assign labels, and as long as they are helped by the major label holders to do so (e.g. in the US, when you go to vote you can save time by checking all democrats or all republicans without even knowing who you voted for. Campaigns are lead on party lines, who cares what this or that person actually thinks about situation.

We read the first two lines, sometimes three (especially if there is no (r) or (d) so you have to figure it out for yourself), assign the label, and read no more.

I think that Robert just tried to aviod labeling in this case and continue with a discussion on the current situation and the blank check the supreme court just issued to the local governments.

And the challenge is, try discussing this or anything else without labeling anything liberal or conservative etc.

over and out.
 06/23/2005 05:59:07 PM · #21
Originally posted by hyperfocal:
I'm really embarrased to be an American lately.


join the crowd
 06/23/2005 06:04:44 PM · #22
I think also, that the referenced Supreme Court decision illuminates a larger and more insidious issue - that of the power of corporations, and their "rights" within a democracy.

Corporations have claimed the same rights as people. They have used this to enormous economic, and antidemocratic, benefit.

This is something that the Founding Fathers were dead set against.

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Thomas Hartmann, who has written extensively on this and related issues:

Thus, with the founding of America, for the first time, only humans could hold rights. Institutions -- churches, civic groups, corporations, clubs, even government itself -- held only privileges. Of course, you'd want government -- that is, We the People through our elected representatives -- to control the privileges of institutions like corporations. And that's what we did. For example, to prevent kingdom-like accumulations of wealth that could, as Jefferson noted, "threaten the state" itself, corporations in the first hundred or so years of this nation couldn't exist longer than 40 years, and then had to be dissolved. Their first purpose had to be to serve the public, and their second purpose to make money. Their books and all their activities had to be fully open and available to inspection by We the People. Their officers and directors could be held personally liable for crimes committed by the corporation.

This held as a legal doctrine until the end of the 1800s, and even after that largely held until the Reagan Revolution, when corporations began reaching back to an obscure headnote written by a corrupt Supreme Court clerk in an otherwise obscure railroad tax case in 1886.

But today corporations are asserting that they -- and only they -- should stand side-by-side with humans in having access to the Bill of Rights. Nike asserted before the Supreme Court last year, as Sinclair Broadcasting did in a press release last month, that these corporations have First Amendment rights of free speech. Dow Chemical in a case it took to the Supreme Court asserted it has Fourth Amendment privacy rights and could refuse to allow the EPA to do surprise inspections of its facilities. J.C. Penney asserted before the Supreme Court that it had a Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from discrimination -- the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to free the slaves after the Civil War -- and that communities that were trying to keep out chain stores were practicing illegal discrimination. Tobacco and asbestos companies asserted that they had Fifth Amendment rights to keep secret what they knew about the dangers of their products. With the exception of the Nike case, all of these attempts to obtain human rights for corporations were successful, and now they wield this huge club against government that was meant to protect relatively helpless and fragile human beings.


So now the Supreme Court has given wealthy developers the "right" to displace people and their private property for the sake of pure personal or corporate profit.

Jefferson would start another Boston Tea Party over this sort of thing.
 06/23/2005 06:13:11 PM · #23
Originally posted by gingerbaker:


Jefferson would start another Boston Tea Party over this sort of thing.


You're damn right he would.

edit: well, he would at least do something about the tyranny.

Message edited by author 2005-06-23 18:17:39.
 06/23/2005 06:23:20 PM · #24
Originally posted by gingerbaker:
Jefferson would start another Boston Tea Party over this sort of thing.

Well-said Roger. What do you think would be the modern day equivalent of the Boston Tea Party?
 06/23/2005 06:33:06 PM · #25
Originally posted by gingerbaker:
I think also, that the referenced Supreme Court decision illuminates a larger and more insidious issue - that of the power of corporations, and their "rights" within a democracy.


Ok, so I'll bite and be the troll here...(LABEL WARNING!!!)
are we really in a democracy any longer? It seems more and more that we (USA) are becoming a Free Market Capitalistic Society, concerned more with big business, profit and buying our way into or out of situations (Enron, Tyco, Williams Communications) than selecting leaders and creating laws that protect the rights of the little people and help them to prosper in a safe and responsible way.
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