Not sure if that would count as “for ends of public utility”. Anyone experienced in this field? This would take a city size amount of farmland for the downtown and most of the city (I think any small towns caught up in the boundaries would be incorporated into it).
This would be kicked off with federal offices, but not necessarily political capitol. There are a ton of federal jobs that really don’t need to be located in a high cost of living area.
The term “eminent domain” was taken from the legal treatise De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), written by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1625,[5] which used the term dominium eminens (Latin for “supreme ownership”) and described the power as follows:
The property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the state, so that the state or those who act for it may use and even alienate and destroy such property, not only in the case of extreme necessity, in which even private persons have a right over the property of others, but for ends of public utility, to which ends those who founded civil society must be supposed to have intended that private ends should give way. But, when this is done, the state is bound to make good the loss to those who lose their property.
I think you’re missing that the US federal government already owns a lot of land, so they don’t really need to seize any land if they want to do that.
This is basically how the city of Richland, Washington came into its present form. During the Manhattan Project the federal government took over the town and some adjacent villages, evicting about 300 people, and built it into a bedroom community that eventually housed about 25,000 people for the nearby Hanford site.
Every state in the US reserves eminent domain. Meaning you don’t truly own your land anyway. You just have a reserved right to that land which can be removed at anytime. However you are required to be compensated under the Fifth Amendment
I started writing up a summary myself, but I started to realize it was looking like a college term paper and this summarizes it much better lol.
I’m not an expert, but I did just listen to a podcast on this (which basically makes me an expert, right?)
I think yes, technically, legally the federal government could. ‘Kelo v. City Of New London’ ruled that purely economic development was a sufficient justification for using the takings power (eminent domain). The reaction by most states was to make their own laws limiting eminent domain powers so that the Kelo situation couldn’t happen with the state government, but the federal government has never passed laws limiting its powers. Bills to limit federal power like S.1313 were introduced but never passed.
Link to podcast?
The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs, episode 117.
The show is hosted by two prosecutors, so in various episodes on criminal cases their opinions skew heavily pro-prosecutor, but when laying out facts like going through a SCOTUS case they tend to be more fact based and less opinion based, I have found.
Just finished listening and have to say that was incredibly bias and wilfully withholding discussion. The obvious other part to me is “just compensation”, that’s the right that is being provided in the amendment. But they never discuss that, they focus only on “public use” - which while can be discussed shouldn’t be the only avenue of discussion. And they continually talk as if Kelo’s property was taken without compensation. I know prosecutors are supposed to argue their case and ignore everything else, and that’s what they did. That was certainly not an academic exercise to present and discuss all information. I certainly won’t be subscribing to them.
They talked about just compensation, but the change and precedent provided by the Kelo case was in the lowering of the standard for taking. The case also set the precedent that the government could take private land not just for public use, but to transfer that land to another private party. Thus the focus on that. Compensation or not, the land was taken against the owner’s will for the purpose of enriching a corporation.
If they covered compensation it was so brief (and lopsided) that I missed it. I think over half the point of that phrase of the amendment was about compensation. But all they said was take take take take private take private take. It was overwhelmingly horribly biased for what they wanted. IMHO take isn’t even the right word because that implies taking without compensation, which there was. If you consider them balanced for scotus and biased for the rest, holy shit.
It is called the Takings Clause by
And when you read the whole thing, I think most of it is about compensation. And in common parlance in discussion when we use the term “take”, well it means take. It doesn’t mean take with compensation in common modern parlance. That’s what I’m referring to. They discuss as if it’s only taking. Really they need to remind and acknowledge at a regular basis that there is compensation. Like I said before, if they mentioned it at all, it was so brief and lopsided that I missed it.
I guess we won’t agree, but I feel the need to call out horribly biased “discussion”.
It is called the Takings Clause by the Supreme Court, Cornell Law, and pretty much anyone else who talks about it. Expect the word “take” in a discussion about it.
The clause itself uses the word “take”. Taking with compensation is still taking.
Please no.
Urban sprawl is terrible for the environment. We should never build another city, ever, globally.
