Attend the Conference on
Friday, March 20, 2015
Kelo: A Decade Later | UConn School of Law
Conference Details and RSVP Link
This event is FREE to those who RSVP by March 18, 2015
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EMINENT DOMAIN
Ten years
ago, Suzette Kelo and her Neighbors in New
London, CT lost their
battle to Eminent Domain as they were forced from their homes. Although developers won, the property on
which their homes sat remains vacant.
Today,
homeowners, farmers, and businesses throughout the country are battling a
Foreign Corporation which is attempting to confiscate their property through
Eminent Domain to facilitate the Keystone Pipeline.
The
correlation between these two battles is addressed within the following
editorial by Eben Rose. In addition, we
also provide you below with a glimpse of how Eminent Domain is impacting other
Americans throughout the Country.
The Really Long View: Whose 'eminent domain' is it?
KeepMEcurrent.com By Eben Rose March 12, 2015
Eben Rose lives in South Portland, Maine.
Ten years ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court deliberated
on an eminent domain case that stuck a nerve across the nation and is still an
enigma in terms of liberal versus conservative interpretations of the proper
role of government.
The case was called Kelo vs. The City of New London 545 U.S.
469 (2005) and was, in summary, a condemnation of private homes in an
established residential neighborhood – including the home of Susette Kelo – for
the purpose of private redevelopment (by Pfizer Corp.).
The details of the case were this: Pfizer had approached the
city of New London, Conn., with a plan to open a new research
center on an abandoned segment of the city’s industrial waterfront. A city
committee was re-inaugurated as a nonprofit corporation to negotiate the plan
with Pfizer and was given eminent domain authority by the city to condemn
properties as it saw fit. Pfizer envisioned new higher-value homes to replace
the older homes of the nearby Fort
Trumbull neighborhood,
and so it sought and received the right to seize these lived-in homes under
eminent domain and re-sell the property for private redevelopment.
Resident Susette Kelo summarized the case succinctly: “They
are simply taking our property from us private owners and giving it to another
private owner to develop.”
The nexus of eminent-domain takings rests in the
interpretation of “public use.” The courts have long decided that “public use”
can include “public benefit,” and if that “public benefit” is justified by
government-enforced transfer of private property, then such seizures are
permissible under the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment. What made the
Kelo case different from previous cases was that the “public benefit” was only
the hoped-for trickle-down effects of economic development. Kelo lost her case
in a close, but not partisan, 5-4 ruling.
Justice O’Conner wrote for the dissenting judges that, “the
government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources
to those with more,” and that, “nothing is to prevent the state from replacing
any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, any farm with a
factory.” In a separate dissent, Justice Thomas likened this power to the
“negro removal” of the 1950s.
Two sad epilogues followed. For one, had the court known
that Pfizer was so intimately involved in the process from the outset, at least
one justice, Justice Kennedy, would have ruled against New London based on
flawed due process. But this intimate involvement was only discovered after the
decision was rendered. For another, and more sadly, Pfizer pulled out of the
deal shortly after the ruling. The waterfront remains undeveloped to this day
and the Fort Trumbull neighborhood is a ghost town of
razed homes, including Susette Kelo’s.
Presently in Nebraska
the rights of landowners are being challenged in the courts over the Keystone
XL pipeline. There, the powerfully lawyered-up TransCanada Corp. and its
allies, including those lawmakers whose candidacy they sponsored in the state’s
unicameral legislature, have been forging ahead with the KXL plan.
Similar battles in Maine
over natural gas pipelines have yet to rage, but already Gov. LePage has
promised to fast-track eminent domain actions, and in so doing to silence and
disempower landowners in the process.
The deep cultural question in all of these battles is who
“the public” is in receiving the “public benefits” of eminent domain. The Maine State
Constitution forbids eminent domain action for economic development alone, but
this hardly clarifies the “public benefit” that is wrapped up in some vague
future discount in fossil fuel prices.
There is a flipside. “Public benefit” can be motivated by
environmental concerns. Infrastructure that enables the burning of fossil fuels
and increases atmospheric CO2 is a dubious public benefit as our own government
increasingly acknowledges. And so eminent domain takings can, at least
theoretically, be justified as a way to shut down such developments rather than
enable them.
Our current national political climate seems concerned with
corporate control of government while at the same time about the overarching
power of government generally. If “we” are the government, then eminent domain
can be used as a check on private (corporate) interpretations of “public
benefit.” If “they” are the government, then landowners beware.
Eben Rose lives in South
Portland.
http://www.keepmecurrent.com/current/the-really-long-view-whose-eminent-domain-is-it/article_1e6a109a-c8cd-11e4-a63f-3372e734ae94.html
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NEBRASKA
Full Coverage
Keystone XL foes rally against Nebraska
pipeline law
CTV News March 11, 2015
LINCOLN, Neb. -- Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline
appealed to Nebraska lawmakers on Wednesday in their latest effort to overturn
the state law that allowed former Gov. Dave Heineman
to approve a route through the state.
Judiciary committee hears eminent
domain arguments
Beatrice Daily Sun March 12, 2015 • By Nicholas Bergin/Lee Enterprises
Nebraska landowners
opposed to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across their farms and
ranches lined up Wednesday to support a state bill to strip TransCanada of its
powers of eminent domain.
But one of the company’s top employees in Nebraska, Andrew
Craig of Omaha, told Nebraska’s Legislative Judiciary Committee the bill
introduced by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers (LB473) would not affect its plans for
the Keystone XL, although it could stymie future pipeline projects in the
state.
“It would not be applied retroactively and therefore would
have no impact on what we’re trying to do in developing the Keystone XL,” Craig
said in an interview following the hearing.
TransCanada is waiting to hear from President Barack Obama
on whether it will be given a permit to build across the border between the United States and Canada. The pipeline would run from
Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele
City on the Nebraska-Kansas border,
where it would connect with existing pipelines that would carry the oil to
refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Continue reading at ….. http://beatricedailysun.com/news/state-and-regional/judiciary-committee-hears-eminent-domain-arguments/article_4574a604-30e4-55b0-b62b-6423404c084d.html
During 4-hour hearing, backers, foes
debate bill that would remove eminent domainauthority
for ... future oil pipelines
POSTED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015 9:00 PM
By Joe Duggan / World-Herald Bureau
LINCOLN
— If not for a Canadian company’s power to condemn private land in Nebraska, the
Keystone XL pipeline would stand almost no chance of being built.
Continue
reading at….. http://www.omaha.com/news/legislature/during--hour-hearing-backers-foes-debate-bill-that-would/article_2014e697-611f-5d0d-998f-dd728b478ab7.html
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