[22] in libertarians
More Good News
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Sun Jun 26 22:11:00 1994
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 94 22:07:32 -0400
From: vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu (Vernon Imrich)
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Never thought I'd see the title "Court Backs Property Owners"
on the legal newswires, but I have.
Read the article in clari.news.usa.law.supreme if you have it.
Basically, the court ruled that a city's demand that a store
owner provide a public bike path across part of its property
in exchange for a permit to build a larger store on the property
was too much of a burden under the 5th amendment takings clause.
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said,
``Property owners have surely found a new friend today.'' He said
the court ``has stumbled badly'' by giving government the burden of
proving that land-use regulations are valid.
Before you get excited though, this was a very narrow ruling
which only "made it harder for governments to require [property owners]
to set aside private land for public purposes."
More ominously was the addendum;
``The good news is the court's explicit recognition that land
use can and should be regulated,'' said John D. Echeverria of the
National Wildlife Federation.
The Constitution's Fifth Amendment bars government from taking
private land without fair compensation, but the court previously
had let government regulate private land use without paying the
owners as long as the regulation does not deny all economically
viable use of the land.
For the record, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas
were on the side of pureness and light. Stevens, Blackmun, Ginsburg
and Souter were on the side of ultimate darkness. A 5-4 squeaker!
Right now this looks like one rock in the middle of a stream, but
add a few more and you have a dam. Is the onslaught against
private property finally weakening?
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| Vernon Imrich | market failure, n. The inabilty of the |
| MIT OE, Rm 5-329b | market to recover from a blow by |
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