> joanna wrote:
>>So, to repeat my earlier query, if abunch of citizens decide that a car
>>dealership would be more productive than Bill Gates' mansion, then we get
>>to raze the mansion? You think this decision will support that move?
>
> It occured to me last night that we're talking past each other (we're
> suffering from discursive incommensurability!). Lawyers like Nathan &
> Justin are talking about points of law, and the rest of us are talking
> about how eminent domain typically works in practice. Seems to me that the
> lawyers are operating in a depoliticized realm of language, precedent, and
> abstract possibilities, but I'm not a lawyer.
No, we're talking about what was actually decided in the case, not what people think was decided.
Corrupt economic development decisions were not on trial. No allegations of that were presented to the Supreme Court. If they had been, the decision might have been different.
What was being decided was whether courts were going to define "public purpose" for all time and foreclose ALL decisions in the future that conflicted with their definition of public purpose. The Court decided that what constitutes public purpose is a political matter and not for courts to decide.
How things "work in practice" is exactly what we fight over in the political world, in electoral campaigns. My whole point is judges should not be intervening in such cases and imposing their political viewpoint on how things should work in practice.
So this is not a "discursive incommensurability" but folks wanting to use the courts to short-circuit democratic decision-making on the belief that democracy is impossible in local land use decisions so we should turn it over to the philosopher-kings on the bench.
Possibly it is the familiarity of the lawyers with those philosopher-kings that makes them more skeptical of handing unilateral power to them.
Nathan Newman