(Untitled)

[musicgeeksrock]

Holy fuck. Yesterday, Supreme Court ruled on the Kelo v. New London case.

Facts of the Case:

New London, a city in Connecticut, used its eminent domain authority to seize private property to sell to private developers. The city said developing the land would create jobs and increase tax revenues. Kelo Susette and others whose property was seized

Comments

[lefuturproche]

This is almost exactly how I felt after reading this decision. In general, when it comes to Supreme Court decisions I assume that whichever side that Rehnquist et al. didn't agree with was in the right, but in this case I found that I actually had to, um, think for myself. Although it seems on the surface to be nothing more than a power-hungry state government's random power grasp, it's actually a little more involved. The important thing to remember is that even though the private properties were going to be sold to private developers, the plan for development was a very public one. It had been reviewed and voted on by the democratically elected members of the New London city council, who are of course public servants. The other thing is that in their opinion, the justices weren't really saying that it was a good thing for the local government to seize private property. Their intent, or so I hear, was more to ensure that these issues were handled on the local government level, rather than going to federal judges who might not be as

[musicgeeksrock]

Mm, that's true. Thank you.

[koip723]

Why are you so shocked that the most conservative judges dissented? That's what real conservatism is about. Liberalism is accepting of change whereas conservatism maintains things the way they are. The current batch of Republicans are screwing with the definitions but a conservative justice like Rhenquist is a real conservative. That means that his enterpreation of the Constitution is based around essentially removing the government from private affairs. It actually takes a very liberal view of the Constitution in order to interperet it as saying that in order to best benefit its citizens a state may seize lands through eminent domain for private interest in order to increase tax revenues (the Constitutional basis for the ruling).
So while yes I agree that the ruling is disgusting, but don't be so upset to find yourself agreeing with the conservative judges.