The United States Supreme Court has ruled that some homeowners
in New London, Connecticut, will have to find other lodgings. The
local authorities want to bulldoze their houses to make way for,
among other things, a building belonging to the Pfizer company.
Could the country be facing a critical shortage of Viagra?
Turns out there is no emergency of this magnitude to justify
this novel use of eminent domain. The local authorities simply
cooked up a development plan and they needed land to make it work.
According to their calculations, the development — which will
include restaurants, stores, and a Coast Guard museum — would
yield much more in tax revenues than a few crummy houses. When some
homeowners declined to sell, the town of New London condemned their
properties. The homeowners went to court and fought it all the way.
They lost, by a split decision.
So, this week the United States Constitution says that it is all
right for the government — any level or branch — to grab property
because it thinks it can make better use of it than the present
owners.
The New York Times and the Washington Post,
mouthpieces for elite thought, immediately pronounced themselves
satisfied with this decision. The Constitution, of course, doesn’t
really mean anything concrete and hasn’t for a long time now. It
means whatever you want it to mean and you hope that there are
enough legal sophists on the Supreme Court to back your
interpretation. One week, there are enough votes to rule that the
growing and smoking of marijuana on your own property for medical
purposes — deemed legal in your state — is an act that falls
under federal jurisdiction because it involves “interstate
commerce.” The next week, the city council can take your house and
give it to a drug company under the doctrine of “public use.” Who
knows what the Constitution will mean next week? Depends on who is
wearing the robes.
So interpretation of the Constitution is merely an exercise in
raw political power and all the learned analysis of all the legal
scholars in the land can’t conceal that.
Still, this ruling hits hard, no matter how well armored in
cynicism you might have thought you were. The faith of the New
York Times’ editors in the wisdom of local governments is
touching. They are assured by the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy,
voting with the majority. The Times notes that according to Kennedy the goal of an eminent
domain taking “cannot simply be to help a developer or private
party become richer.”
Oh, well, in that case, no problem.
The truth — as anyone who does not work in a building in
Manhattan that was constructed on land acquired through the use of
eminent domain knows — is that developers and local pols, from sea
to shining sea, are rubbing their hands over this ruling. And that
when local governments start condemning properties, it won’t be in
Westchester County. The little man will, as always, get the boot
while the elites do some extended chin pulling and talk about
“cities’ ability to act in the public interest.”
The Times was especially gratified that the decision
marked “a setback to the ‘property rights’ movement.” The editors
put the phrase property rights in quotes to signal their belief
that the whole concept is specious. In their view, when it comes to
“property rights,” you don’t have any. When the city council cuts a
deal with some developers who want your land for a new stadium or
mall or office complex…well, hard cheese old stick. Here’s a
check, go find yourself another hovel where you can live out your
miserable, insignificant existence.
What is especially galling and depressing is not the high-handed
naivete of the Times or the pomposity of the justices. The
Times’ position, after all, was hardly unexpected. Nor was
it a surprise when, a day after the ruling, that same Justice
Kennedy said, in a speech before the Florida Bar, that “when judges
are attacked unfairly, it’s proper for the bar over the course of
time, in a professional and elegant way, to explain to the public
the meaning of the rule of law.”
The “elegant” part seems a reach. These are lawyers, after all.
But we can surely expect the “professional” part, in heavy
helpings. Lawyers — including Supreme Court justices — are real
good at explaining in a professional way why the rest of us don’t
get it.
Still, one hopes that someday soon, enough Americans will get
fed up and explain to the high priests of the law — and the other
elites who think it is okay to send the sheriff around to kick you
out of your house — that no matter what they think the
Constitution says, or ought to say, there is a higher, older law.
According to this law, what you own belongs to you and you are
entitled to defend it.
There was a time, long before anyone had ever heard of Pfizer
and Viagra, when there was enough virility in America to fight
back. One prays there will be again. And soon.
