But at some level what difference does it make? If you grab land for a publicly-owned football stadium that profits a private team, why should that have more legal sanction that land handed over to a private developer who signs a contract to create 500 living wage jobs and build 300 affordable housing units?
"Public purpose" is inherently a political judgement, not a simple question of who ends of owning the land at the end of the day. My core position is that I don't think courts should be making those political judgements, so that's why Kelo was properly decided.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Brown" <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 9:35 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] When is private property NOT?
> This is a pretty important observation you make, Nathan. This seems to
> mean
> the case does not stand for the proposition that public reports are saying
> it does.
>
> Charles
>
> Nathan Newman :
>
> "So the land is being taken for public ownership:
>
>
>
> -clip-
>
> And here's something almost no one paid attention to. The land being taken
> is not being sold to private developers. "the development corporation will
> own the land located within the development area. The development
> corporation will enter into ground leases of various parcels to private
> developers; those leases will require the developer to comply with the
> terms
> of the development plan."
>
> So the land is being taken for public ownership, which should satisfy even
> "public use" fundamentalists, unless eminent domain is illegitimate even
> if
> any part of such land is leased to any private company.
>
> Again, maybe the development plan is not the best possible, but with such
> a
> complicated public planning process, I actually don't think it's the role
> of
> the courts to second-guess whether the community was sufficiently taken
> account of. A far better focus of the courts -- one I have far more
> sympathy
> for -- would be for them to assure that voting rights of average citizens
> are being respected so that elected leaders are responsible to the
> community. But the judges shouldn't try to substitute their judgement for
> the actually elected leaders.
>
> Nathan Newman
>
>
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>
>