Sotomayor Favors Legalized Theft Through Eminent Domain

Israpundit ^ | 7/24/09 | Bill Levinson

[Winged Hussar]

It is already known that Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has used racist language to describe herself as more qualified than "white males." According to "Vote No on Sotomayor" (Wall Street Journal, July 24 2009, page A13), Sonia Sotomayor also, as a jurist on the Second Circuit, voted to sanction the moral and ethical equivalent of retail theft by price tag switching. This is strong language, but we invite our readers to tell us why it does not accurately describe the quoted material:

Judge Sotomayor also revealed a troubling approach to property rights in Didden v. Village of Port Chester (2006). Sitting on another Second Circuit panel, Judge Sotomayor voted to uphold the condemnation of the plaintiffs’ private property despite the obvious corruption surrounding the case. The plaintiffs’ only faced condemnation because they refused to pay off a politically connected developer. When they refused to pay, the city then condemned the land, declaring it for “public use.”

(More about Didden v. Village of Port Chester here)

[Winged Hussar]

Eminent domain = the moral and ethical equivalent of retail theft by price tag switching.

Developers who use it to take property for non-public uses therefore have the ethics of common thieves, as do those who enable them (such as municipal officials and compliant USSC justices)

[combat_boots]

I know someone who already had this happen. Midwestern man with country acreage and house (house was not taken).

[notpoliticallycorewrecked]

Why should this opinion surprise anyone. It is to be expected of any good liberal. All hail the Fatherland.

[the invisib1e hand]

The logic of power:

the people trump the individual
the government is the people
therefore the government trumps the individual.

[allmendream]

Public use means public use. The government taking my property and selling it to someone else is not “public use”. It is theft.

From the 5th Amendment: nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

[originalbuckeye]

Tell Suzanne Kelo that; it IS theft. Then condemn Souter, Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg and O'Connor. One of the worst decisions in the history of the USSC.

[mikrofon]

She would probably refer to it as “imminent” domain...

(which is scary in its irony)

[antiRepublicrat]

Public use means public use. The government taking my property and selling it to someone else is not “public use”. It is theft.

Believe it or not, developers can still take your property even when this concept is technically upheld. A while back on FR there was a story where someone had a small plot at the edge of a large block in Texas. A developer wanted the whole block for commercial development and the plot was right where he wanted the entrance. The developer wouldn't give the guy a good deal either, and Texas law prevents taking for private use.

So what's a developer to do? Easy, even with a multi-acre public park a couple blocks away the city condemned the guy's land to turn it into a public park, to be maintained by a company set up by the developer. Then the city gave an easement to the developer to use the park as an entrance to the development.

See, they didn't sell it to the developer and it is technically for public use.

[PressurePoint]

Yep. In case anyone missed it: eminent = imminent.

This in addition to not being able to comment on the common law right of self defense dating back to the Magna Carta. She apparently sat bewildered in a lot of her law school classes.

Or as she would call the grand-daddy of natural rights: the Magic Carter.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Souter, Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg and O'Connor.

I think it was Kennedy who voted with the majority. I believe that O'Connor, for once, voted with the conservatives on Kelo.

[allmendream]

Sorry, but O'Connor had very good points raised during discussion and DESSENTED from the majority opinion. Your condemnation of O'Connor would be misplaced.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion (Kelo vs New London); he was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

[originalbuckeye]

Oops. It was my recollection that it was O'Connor. Mea Culpa! (Next time I will check instead of relying on my aging memory!)

[rabidralph]

Did she call it imminent domain?