A man's home is... somebody else's piggy-bank
Glenn Reynolds
If you doubted that we're seen mostly as sources of revenue to be milked for the benefit of Big Government and its constituency groups, today's Supreme Court decision in the Kelo case, essentially holding that state and local governments can condemn your property and turn it over to private businesses for private purposes so long as they expect the turnover to produce higher property tax revenues, should settle things.
It used to be that tax revenues were to be spent promoting the public good. Now, apparently, they're a public good in and of themselves.
To be fair, today's decision isn't a huge departure from previous law, which has been creeping in this direction for nearly a century. But it seems quite troubling to me. Here's what Justice Joseph Story, a leading light of the Supreme Court and perhaps the most eminent constitutional scholar of the first half of the nineteenth century, wrote:
It seems to be the general opinion, fortified by a strong current of judicial opinion, that since the American revolution no state government can be presumed to possess the transcendental sovereignty to take away vested rights of property; to take the property of A. and transfer it to B. by a mere legislative act. A government can scarcely be deemed to be free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body, without any restraint. The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty, and private property should be held sacred. At least, no court of justice, in this country, would be warranted in assuming, that any state legislature possessed a power to violate and disregard them; or that such a power, so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty, lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expression of the will of the people, in the usual forms of the constitutional delegation of power. The people ought not to be presumed to part with rights, so vital to their security and well-being, without very strong, and positive declarations to that effect.
"A government can scarcely be deemed to be free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon a legislative body."
But isn't that where we are now?
I predict that this will be a big political issue, on both the left and the right. For Bush and the Republicans it's a big vulnerability -- if they don't do anything about it, many conservatives will stay home in disgust at the next election. On the other hand, if they do something -- like, say, backing Congressional action to limit takings for private use -- they'll offend wealthy real estate developers, merchants, and influential local populations. They'll be squeezed, and I don't think that "help us confirm our judges to reverse this" will be a sufficient answer, though they'll try to make it one.
On the left, it's seen (rightly) as a victory for the hated Wal-Mart, and as a rule whose burden is sure to fall mostly on the poor. (When did a city ever level a rich neighborhood for this sort of thing?) On the other hand, the left isn't big on limits to government power, especially in the economic sphere.
It's certainly a hot issue on talk radio and in the blogosphere already. I suspect it'll stay that way through the 2006 elections.
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