Here is a column I wrote for the Orange County Register about the need for more protections against eminent domain. It ran in today’s paper. Enjoy!
An excerpt is below along with the link to the full content:
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, in part: "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Federalist Paper No. 10 says, in part: "The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government." Despite such strong affirmations of private property rights in some of our nation’s founding documents, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in a case called Kelo vs. City of New London (Conn.) that a governmental taking of private property for the purpose of transferring it to a private entity can satisfy the definition of "public use." Under this misguided 5-4 decision, a city or county government could literally condemn your home for the purpose of giving the land to another private citizen who was going to build a bigger house that would provide more tax revenue to the city or county.
Read the full text here.