Eminently Justified?

It's been a long week. I headed down to Central Florida to give a speech on health care of all things. Yes, I know - what do I know about health care? Well, not as much as NFIB's experts, but they weren't available. So, I've been boning up. Which is why the Liberty Blog's been slow for a few days. (The speech went well, thank you for asking.)

But now I want to turn back to an issue I raised last week - the Hartford Courant's editorial on the Lost Liberty Hotel project, published on the 8th:

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-hotelnewhampshire.artfeb08,0,4889197.story

Eminently Unsuitable Response

Americans of all political ideologies objected last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed New London's right to evict homeowners to make way for private development.

Outgoing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing in dissent of that ruling, spoke for many when she said: "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory."

Eminent domain should be a tool of last resort. It should never be invoked in favor of a private party just because that party can produce greater tax revenue than the rightful property owner.

But the proper way to defend against that happening is to tighten laws and spell out specific rules for the drastic step of taking someone's land in the interest of the public good. An example of improper response is the action of eminent domain protesters who staged a frivolous attempt to seize the New Hampshire home of Justice David Souter.

Justice Souter, who voted with the majority in Kelo vs. City of New London, but didn't write the opinion, owns a 200-year-old house in Weare, N.H. A group led by a California businessman named Logan Darrow Clements proposed building a hotel on the site. Mr. Clements claimed Weare would earn greater tax revenues and economic benefits from his plan than from the justice's hideaway.

This is silly, of course. Justice Souter did not make the law and shouldn't be subject to such abuse even if he did. It's wrong to harass him for doing his job. Mr. Clements' view that his protest was analogous to the Boston Tea Party is ludicrous.

The stunt undermines the seriousness of the eminent domain issue. Fortunately, the people of Weare saw through it. They voted not to put the issue on the ballot.

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant
---end quoted material---

I disagree, vehemently (imagine that!) - and I wrote the following back to the paper:

Letter to the Editor Re: Object Lessons Are "Eminently Reasonable"

To the Editor:
I disagree with the Courant’s characterization of the movement to condemn Justice Souter’s home as an “unsuitable” response (Eminently Unsuitable Response, Feb. 8). First, the High Court’s basic duty is to take each case on an individual basis and determine whether the issues raised therein are constitutional or not. It is far too easy for members of the court to hide behind "stare decisis" in order to avoid making hard decisions. And despite long-standing precedent, the court has been known to change course when it becomes apparent that the one prior courts have chosen is ill-advised.

That’s the essence of a "landmark" decision.

Second, object lessons are always tremendously effective—especially when it comes to issues of what’s mine and thine. All too frequently in the arena of property rights, we have instances where people are inflicting their vision of how someone else's property ought to be used, without any real sense of just what that means for the owner of that property. Without that sense, policy is made in a vacuum – and we are left with decisions like Kelo.

This happened in Utah several years ago when Robert Redford was passionately advocating for the designation of hundreds of thousands of acres of land as wilderness – a decision many in Utah thought would harm local residents (much in the same way as eminent domain). Then activists in Utah began to investigate the conversion of Mr. Redford’s ranch land into wilderness.

Redford has since cooled his enthusiasm for such designations.

The Lost Liberty Project would have taught Justice Souter an equally valuable lesson: that Supreme Court decisions have a real world impact, an impact that can be felt by anyone.

Sincerely...

----end quoted material---

Anyone... even a Supreme Court justice.

What I was only able to allude to, given space and editorial constraints, is that the point is that Justice Souter wasn't doing his job, and that reliance on prior decision in this line of legal reasoning is, in fact, an avoidance of carrying out his duties in a responsible manner.

And in any case, since when is "I'm just doing my job" any excuse when someone is committing an unjust act?

That's a rhetorical question I'll leave you all to ponder...

Next up: Popular Mechanics' take on Katrina...

- Andrew Langer