This was in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.
New York judges served up what basketball fans call a facial on Tuesday, when an appellate court ruled that the state may seize homes and small businesses in Brooklyn for the benefit of a private developer and the New Jersey Nets. The decision represents a backward step for the effort to protect property rights at the state level since the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London.
The case, Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation, dealt with plans by developer Forest City Ratner to build a new arena for the Nets as well as snazzy apartments and offices on land currently occupied by homes and businesses. To make way for the sports complex, the state declared the property “blighted” and used its power of eminent domain to hand it to the developer.
Such unabashed takings have an unfortunate history in New York state, where the political class has a habit of using its powers on behalf of well-connected private interests. Caught under the wheels are average citizens whose only recourse is to try to defend their property rights in court. …
Basically, the powers-that-be in New York can now label whatever property they want as blighted and hand it over to private developers. So much for property rights in New York. Sandra Day O’Connor got it right when she dissented on the Kelo deciscion: “the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
Elections have consequences that many Americans don’t think about when they go to the voting booth. Liberal presidents appointing liberal judges, who scoff at the property rights of average Americans, is one of those consequences.
It might get to the point where after enough transgressions of the meaning of the Constitution by progressives on SCOTUS, that nullification would begin by the states. Enough of them make a stink by basically saying to the feds “make me” and the “deal” would be new constitutional amendments. This is just a theory, but Jefferson and a few other founders believed it to be the power of the states to ultimately control.
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We can always hope. But then again – there’s little hope for states like New York. Not only would they not want to nullify the Kelo decision, they’re using it to their advantage. It’s disgusting.
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More need to “vote with their feet” as the founders believed. After enough leave, they turn on themselves.
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