Government Can Take Your Home if Someone Important Wants It

The best way to fight?

Fight what?

The evil cesspools of corruption that prey upon the weak?

Oh. You're talking about your state and local government that is run by your state and local representatives that YOU elect to office.

Let me get this straight. When your locally-elected officials use the power of eminent domain--a power that YOU gave to them via the laws of your state--you become irate and you want the President to appoint judges to the federal bench to stop your elected officials from doing what YOU gave them the power to do in the first place.

I don't understand.

Aren't you the same people who want Roe v. Wade overturned so that the people in each state can determine for themselves through the democratic process whether the state's power to regulate abortions should be limited?

Doesn't the same apply to the state's power to regulate property takings for public use? Shouldn't the people in each state determine for themselves through the democratic process whether the state's eminent domain powers should be limited?

I am so bewildered.

Jeepers Brandon are you deliberately missing the point? Talk about cursing the darkness....Debra_Law has clearly indicated the solution to this issue of eminent domain. Foxfyre the same with you. Why the focus on the Supreme Court or is eminent domain simply a stalking horse to use to push the argument that Bush should be free to appoint whichever conservative, right-wing justice he wishes to the Supreme Court?

It is clear even to me that the solution to the alleged abuse of eminent domain is to deal with those who have the power to use/abuse it - the States. The Supreme Court has, for better or ill, interpreted the law to expand the concept. Okay you may have an argument with their interpretation and that's fair enough but when it comes to doing something about it moaning about the Supreme Court isn't the way to do it.

Get active and get active with your State government.

But all in all I think I got through that one relatively unscathed

To Goodfielder, no, because I think it was never intended that the state government or any level of government should be allowed to seize the property of one citizen for private use by another; not for any reason. The Constitution intended to protect the rights of the little guy as well as promote the general welfare and I believe the particular ruling in question ran roughshod over a specific amendment intended to do just that.

The taxing [and taking] power of the states is primarily vested in their Legislatures, deriving their authority from the people. When a state Legislature acts within the scope of its authority it is responsible to the people, and their right to change the agents to whom they have intrusted the power is ordinarily deemed a sufficient check upon its abuse. When the constituted authority of the state undertakes to exert the taxing power, and the question of the validity of its action is brought before this court, every presumption in its favor is indulged, and only clear and demonstrated usurpation of power will authorize judicial interference with legislative action.

In the present instance under the authority of the Constitution and laws prevailing in North Dakota the people, the Legislature, and the highest court of the state have declared the purpose for which these several acts were passed to be of a public nature, and within the taxing authority of the state. With this united action of people, [253 U.S. 233, 240] Legislature and court, we are not at liberty to interfere unless it is clear beyond reasonable controversy that rights secured by the federal Constitution have been violated. What is a public purpose has given rise to no little judicial consideration. Courts, as a rule, have attempted no judicial definition of a 'public' as distinguished from a 'private' purpose, but have left each case to be determined by its own peculiar circumstances. Gray, Limitations of Taxing Power, 176.

'Necessity alone is not the test by which the limits of state authority in this direction are to be defined, but a wise statesmanship must look beyond the expenditures which are absolutely needful to continue the existence of organized government, and embrace others which may tend to make that government subserve the general well-being of society, and advance the present and prospective happiness and prosperity of the people.' Cooley, Justice, in People v. Salem, 20 Mich. 452, 4 Am. Rep. 400.

Questions of policy are not submitted to judicial determination, and the courts have no general authority of supervision over the exercise of discretion which under our system is reposed in the people or other departments of government.

In affirming the City's authority to take petitioners' properties, we do not minimize the hardship that condemnations may entail, notwithstanding the payment of just compensation. We emphasize that nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further restrictions on its exercise of the takings power. Indeed, many States already impose "public use" requirements that are stricter than the federal baseline. Some of these requirements have been established as a matter of state constitutional law, while others are expressed in state eminent domain statutes that carefully limit the grounds upon which takings may be exercised. As the submissions of the parties and their amici make clear, the necessity and wisdom of using eminent domain to promote economic development are certainly matters of legitimate public debate. This Court's authority, however, extends only to determining whether the City's proposed condemnations are for a "public use" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Because over a century of our case law interpreting that provision dictates an affirmative answer to that question, we may not grant petitioners the relief that they seek.

Expand the concept? That is what judicial activism is, after all isn't it? And it is that to which many of us object. It is only through the amendment process by which the Constitution should be expanded, eliminated, changed or whatever, not by judicial rulings from SCOTUS. I believe it is not difficult to see the danger in a ruling that allows local or state or the federal government to set aside a particular Constitutional protection for the powerless.

I want judges who understand that and refuse to use their powers for such 'expansion of Constitutional intent'.

That is my official (for now) response to Debra too.

Lol, don't you see what the key word is in this case, Deb, that brings about concern?

Property.

Cycloptichorn

You are WRONG concerning the original intent of the United States Constitution and what it sought to protect. If you do your research, you will KNOW that the Fifth Amendment's "Takings Clause" was a limitation on FEDERAL power only--it was NOT a limitation on state power.

Accordingly, your federal constitutional argument that "it was NEVER intended that STATE government . . . should be allowed to seize property of one citizen for private use by another; not for any reason," and that the Supreme Court ran roughshod over the Fifth Amendment has no basis in fact or law. Originally, the taxing and taking powers of the state were unrestrained by any federal authority.

Debra writes

Quote:

You are WRONG concerning the original intent of the United States Constitution and what it sought to protect. If you do your research, you will KNOW that the Fifth Amendment's "Takings Clause" was a limitation on FEDERAL power only--it was NOT a limitation on state power.

Accordingly, your federal constitutional argument that "it was NEVER intended that STATE government . . . should be allowed to seize property of one citizen for private use by another; not for any reason," and that the Supreme Court ran roughshod over the Fifth Amendment has no basis in fact or law. Originally, the taxing and taking powers of the state were unrestrained by any federal authority.

I will concede that the Fifth Amendment initially applied to only Federal Law. Less than 100 years later, however, the Fourteenth Amendment extended the protections of the Fifth Amendments to include the states. This was ratified by the states with no little effort. To this day some contend the Fourteenth Amendment is unconstitutional.

It may violate some provision of the State Constitution against unequal taxation; but the Federal Constitution imposes no restraints on the States in that regard. If private property be taken for public uses without just compensation, it must be remembered that, when the fourteenth amendment was adopted, the provision on that subject, in immediate juxtaposition in the fifth amendment with the one we are construing [the due process clause], was left out, and this was taken.

Taxes levied to fund a lawfully elected government is one thing. Condemnation of private property for public use is one thing. Condemnation of private property for use by another private property is a much different thing. And I believe the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted mostly to prevent that kind of injustice.

I am sure you are not suggesting now that the states do not have to adhere to the Fifth Amendment. To say that would suggest that the states are not obligated to abide by any of the Bill of Rights or any of the Constitution where it is not specifically spelled out that they must comply.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Lol, don't you see what the key word is in this case, Deb, that brings about concern?

Property.

Cycloptichorn

Now what are you saying here? Are you implying that it is somehow unworthy for a person not to want the powerful to steal his home, or even his investment?

If it belongs to you, then there exists no moral right for another to take it, except in that very specific case where the government takes it for an absolute emergency.

You use the word "property" as though the desire to protect one's property from theft is ignoble. Is this, in fact, what you believe?

Lol, my point is that there is, as Deb so eloquently pointed out, a real disparity on the Right side of the political spectrum when it comes to the question of protection of rights; namely, Righties are only concerned when it comes to the question of whether property of someone is threatened. Forget about their lives, happiness, equality; none of that matters to the right side of the spectrum near as much as property, which is essentially money.

Therefore I, like Deb, do not see too much concern for one's fellow man in this case but rather just another concern for money.

Cycloptichorn