Eminent domain II

DENISE HOAGLAND likes to sit on her front porch, with her exuberant dog, and admire the Atlantic. The view is soothing when calm, awesome when stormy and makes the plot on which her modest home stands rather valuable. She does not want to move, but the local government has told her that she must. The city of Long Branch, New Jersey has labelled her neighbourhood blighted—which it plainly is not—to justify seizing it and transferring it to a developer who wants to erect luxury apartments there. That suits the authorities: swanky condos would yield more taxes. But the people whose houses are to be bulldozed are furious. “Hands off our homes” signs abound on the street where Mrs Hoagland lives. Another reads: “Mayor—Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's land.”

Since property rights are one of the foundations on which America's immense prosperity is built, it seems odd to undermine them. The framers of the constitution understood this well. True, the fifth amendment allows the government to take private property, but only for public use and so long as just compensation is paid. Public use has long been understood to mean what it says: a road, a public school or the like. Few would dispute that the state needs a tool (known as the power of eminent domain, or outside America as compulsory purchase) to prevent a lone homeowner from blocking an interstate highway.

[...]

But second, Kelo provoked a backlash. Most Americans are repelled by the idea that the state might take your house and give it to Donald Trump. (This is not rhetoric: New Jersey once tried, unsuccessfully, to seize someone's home because The Donald needed somewhere to park limousines outside one of his casinos.) Since the Kelo ruling, no fewer than 34 states have passed laws or constitutional amendments aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain. At the mid-term elections, voters in ten states approved measures curbing politicians' power to seize private property, all by wide margins. Only two ballot initiatives failed, in California and Idaho, and that because they clearly went too far. Re-worded, they could easily pass.

Por sugestão anónima em comentário ao artigo anterior, aqui fica a referência para os artigos de fundo da The Economist sobre a temática e suas repercursões:

• Despotism by stealth, 17 de Fevereiro de 2005.
• Hands off our homes, 18 de Agosto de 2005.
• An American's home is still her castle, 23 de Novembro de 2006.