Historically, "the law" of eminent domain has been used very cautiously and conscientiously, usually enacted as a last resort and for what almost everyone understood as a public good: a military structure, a bridgehead or land to be used for public transportation. But this is the era of big government, and no one claims that its hallmarks include caution, conscience or even common sense.No, like other unconstitutional abuses of private freedoms, eminent domain is increasingly used to justify outright thievery of public property. For instance, since the radical environmentalists and the bureaucrats they've cowed have more pull on lawmakers than the folks in your neighborhood, if they decide to tear down your homes to put in a sanctuary for the teal-toed tortoises, then you've got to pack up. Nothing you can do about it. It's the government, pal. Move on.
More frequently, however, government is motivated nowadays to use emminent domain to increase its coffers. After all, a shopping mall or amusement park will generate more tax revenue than the quaint little homes on your cul-de-sac will. The end for the property owner is the same. See you around, folks; don't let the wrecking ball hit you on your way out.
Nicole Gelinas has written a superb article on the topic of eminent domain for City Journal that I think you'll find most illuminating. Her article is entitled "Eminent Domain as Central Planning" and in it she draws general principles from the specific ways in which state governments like New York are taking irresponsible, greed-oriented eminent domain to new levels. Here's a teaser:
Free markets are out of vogue. The unfortunate lesson that policymakers have learned over the past two years is that a big, brainy government that supposedly creates jobs is superior to irrational, faceless markets that just create catastrophic errors. So Washington has seized on the financial and economic crises to enlarge its role in managing the economy—controlling the insurance giant AIG, for example, and trying to maintain high housing prices through tax credits and “mortgage modification” programs.
But when it comes to central economic planning, New York City and State are way ahead of the feds. Empire State politicians from both parties already believe that it’s their responsibility to replace people and businesses in allocating the economy’s resources. They’re even confident that their duty to design a perfect economy trumps their constituents’ right to hold private property. Three current cases of eminent-domain abuse in New York show how serious they are—and how much damage such government intrusiveness can wreak...
To cure yourself of the notion that the government can do better than free markets in producing economic vitality, stroll around Atlantic Yards. You’ll walk past three-story clapboard homes nestled next to elegantly corniced row houses—the supposedly blighted residences that the state plans to demolish. You’ll see the Spalding Building, a stately sporting-goods-factory-turned-condo-building that, thanks to Ratner and his government allies, has been slated for demolition and now stands empty. You’ll peer up at Goldstein’s nearly empty apartment house, scheduled to be condemned and destroyed.
And you’ll see how wrecking balls have already made the neighborhood gap-toothed. A vacant lot, for example, now sprawls where the historic Ward Bakery warehouse was, until recently, a candidate for private-sector reinvestment. Today, Prospect Heights finally shows what the state and city governments want everyone to see: decay. The decay, though, isn’t the work of callous markets that left the neighborhood to perish. It’s the work of a developer wielding state power to press property owners to sell their land “voluntarily.” It’s also the result of a half-decade’s worth of government-created uncertainty, which stopped genuine private investment in its tracks.
Such uncertainty offers a crucial lesson to the rest of the nation, and not just in the area of eminent domain. Whenever government fails to confine itself to a limited role in the economy, it creates similar uncertainty. Even when the results aren’t as poignantly obvious as they are in Brooklyn, the private economy suffers—whether it’s financial or auto bailouts unfairly benefiting some firms at the expense of others, or mortgage bailouts unfairly benefiting some home buyers at the expense of others. Free markets may be imperfect, but they’re far better than the alternative—the blight of arbitrary government control and the uncertainty that it creates.
To learn more about the ever-encroaching domination of government over private property, you might also check out the website of Castle Coalition. It too will open your eyes...and you won't like what you see.
