Nathan Newman: 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?
^^^^ CB: Yes,no getting around that the public sector is the handmaiden of the private sector under our system. Public productive enterprise is repressed and largely illegal as a first principle of a capitalist organization of society. Purported pursuit of public purposes is often a fraud.
On the other hand, it is difficult for many relatively small areas of land to be used to serve the _whole_ public. For example, a publically owned house or apartment can still in fact only serve a _private_ family. At the GM Poletown plant's land taken for public purpose, only a tiny minority of the whole population gets the 3000 jobs there.
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"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.
^^^^ CB: In general, I am anti-court like you.
Abstractly discussing it, I'm not sure that the distinction of public purpose as a political judgment distinguishes it as non-court. For example, in Michigan , the Supreme Court that voted the opposite way on this issue is elected. In general, courts are political. Law is politics. Courts render political judgments, especially on "political" cases of this type.
Many elected officials from the executive and legislative branches are, of course, "buyable" to vote against the "general interest" in favor of a particular interest.