Connecticut Voters Say 11 - 1 Stop Eminent Domain

July 28, 2005 - Connecticut Voters Say 11 - 1 Stop Eminent Domain, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds;

Connecticut voters say 89 - 8 percent that the state legislature should pass laws limiting the use of eminent domain, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Republican voters support such limits 91 - 8 percent, as Democrats favor limits 85 - 11 percent and independent voters want limits 94 - 5 percent.

A total of 61 percent of Connecticut voters "disagree somewhat" or "disagree strongly" with the traditional use of eminent domain to take private property for public uses such as schools and roads, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

That number jumps to 88 percent of voters who disagree strongly or somewhat with newer applications of eminent domain to take private property for economic development projects.

"A person's home is his castle, Connecticut voters say. The government has no right to take it," said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.

"Eight out of 10 voters followed closely the news about the Supreme Court decision in the New London case and they clearly do not agree with the decision. Now they want their state lawmakers to put some limits on the use of eminent domain."

Although tempting, the reaction to a Supreme Court decision believed by "We, the People" to be inconsistent with the philosophy and premise of the United States Constitution should not rely on enactment of more laws by the United States Congress.

That is, of course, a possible and predictable response, but may only further endanger the people's liberty.

This is a timely and almost "providential" case, coming, as it does, at a time when a new Supreme Court justice is being quizzed by the Left on whether he considers a decision by any one majority on the Court to become "settled law." A re-reading of the warnings on that subject by America's Founders and later Presidents and justices might be revealing for those who are concerned about Kelo, with its potential for tyrannical abuse of citizens.

A sample of such a warning can be found in the First Inaugural Address of President Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer, on the dangerous consequences of accepting a Supreme Court ruling in one case as "irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made. . . ." (Lincoln)

Lincoln: "I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

"Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes." - Abraham Lincoln

Did Abraham Lincoln and America's Founders not have a better(/u> idea?

The "people's" liberty was never entrusted to a majority combination of men and women on the Supreme Court of any given year. If that were the case, we could not call ours a "government of laws, not of men."

Who understood our Constitutional protections more--Lincoln and the Founders, or today's politicians and lawyers?

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