Posted on 06/23/2005 11:11:59 PM PDT by sirthomasthemore
THE country is bracing for a bruising battle over filling a Supreme Court vacancy, a battle in which conservatives will praise "judicial restraint" and "deference" to popularly elected branches of government and liberals will praise judicial activism in defense of individual rights. But consider what the court did Thursday.
Most conservatives hoped that, in the most important case the court would decide this term, judicial activism would put a leash on popularly elected local governments and would pull courts more deeply into American governance in order to protect the rights of individuals. On Thursday, conservatives were disappointed.
The case came from New London, Conn., where the city government, like all governments, wants more revenues and has empowered a private entity, the New London Development Corporation, to exercise the awesome power of eminent domain. It has done so to condemn an unblighted working-class neighborhood in order to give the space to private developers whose condominiums, luxury hotel and private offices would pay more taxes than do the owners of the condemned homes and businesses.
The question answered Thursday was: Can government profit by seizing the property of people of modest means and giving it to wealthy people who can pay more taxes than can be extracted from the original owners? The court answered yes.
The Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" (emphasis added). All state constitutions echo the Constitution's Framers by stipulating that takings must be for "public use." The Framers, who weighed their words, clearly intended the adjective "public" to circumscribe government's power: Government should take private property only to create things — roads, bridges, parks, public buildings — directly owned or primarily used by the general public.
(Excerpted, and continued below)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1575546&mesg_id=1575546
DU, of all places, doesn't like the ruling.
DU, while not liking the ruling, STILL manages to get it wrong though.
In their moonbat world, the 5 were conservatives and the 4 dissenters are liberals.
And its Bush's fault. Somehow
Conservatives didn't do anything, liberals eviscerated private property rights. WTH is the bowtie whelping about? Its the conservatives fault? Cripes talk about relativism. He never castigates the "liberals" who gave birth to this monstrosity, just the conservative phantoms who are somehow enamored with "majoritarian rule". I'm telling ya, DC does strange things to folks.
They have it backwards. They say the dissenters are DUmmies and those who wrote in favor of this ruling were Conservative.
What conservative likes this ruling?
Does anybody except a political crony like this ruling?
Because he is a liberal.
What is surprising is this is the same USSC that basically told Al Gore to "Go To Hell" in 2000.
Will misses the point of the argument between judicial restraint vs. judicial activism entirely. Advocates for judicial restraint are not calling for the courts to automatically defer to all actions of the legislatures, only to restrain from acting in the place of the legislatures.
"the power to tax involves the power to destroy"--McCulluch v. Maryland, 1819.
I can't think of a worse Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade.
"Does anybody except a political crony like this ruling?"
Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer like it.
Because the Washinton Post is mental. They have issues.
Those that opposed Bork own this decision.
They need to suck on "Kelo".
Agree. Let the liberals realize how bad this is and it is totally their fault.
"Actually, this ruling makes strange bed fellows, Checkers. DU doesn't like it cause it supports big business at the expense of the poor- (one of Justice Thomas' points)- and we don't like it because it constitutes government intrusion and an egregiously wrong interpretation of the Constitution."
Yet, they will hate Justice Thomas forever.
SCOTUS sunk Al Gore because the different counties were using different standards to do the recounts and because the whole State of Florida wasn't being recounted. That was 7-2.
That there wasn't time before the Electoral College vote to redress the error was 5-4.
They didn't tell All Gore to GTH. They told him he made a mistake and should have asked for the whole state, and told Florida Supreme Court they should have elucidated one standard.
What do Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer have in common?
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