O'Connor's dissent, in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined, put the bottom line starkly: Kelo meant that property owners could be stripped of their land whenever the government decided that some other owner - some wealthier owner - could use it to make more money or generate more business. If it takes no more than that to satisfy the Constitution's command that only land required "for public use" may be condemned, "then the words 'for public use' do not realistically exclude any takings, and thus do not exert any constraint on the eminent domain power." After all, she observed, practically any lawful use of private property will generate some incidental public benefit. "here is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose."īut as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out in a vigorous dissent, the Supreme Court had never held that economic development alone could justify the use of eminent domain.
"Promoting economic development is a traditional and long-accepted function of government," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens, in a rather bloodless majority opinion joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy. Property could be confiscated for entirely private use, the court ruled, so long as the government expected some eventual public benefit, such as an expanded tax base or new jobs. In so doing, the majority decided that the words "public use" in the Fifth Amendment - "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation" - did not mean what they said. City of New London that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses through eminent domain in order to make the land available to new owners for redevelopment. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled in Kelo v. On June 23, 2005, the US Supreme Court handed down one of the most reviled decisions in its history.
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