Funmurphys: the Blog

Break Out The Black Arm Bands

Note to Justice John Paul Stevens: pull your head out of your butt:

"Home and business owners' contention that economic development doesn't qualify as public use "is supported by neither precedent nor logic," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. "

Stevens added that "because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment."

I'm not a big fan of Justice O'Conner, but she got it right in her dissent:

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."

We're replacing bedrock rights clearly in the constitution like private property and replacing them stretches like the right to abortion, the right to healthcare and the right to free school lunches. A terrible day for the constitution, and more shredding, foot wiping, and overturning than John Ashcroft has ever done and will ever do.