Columbia University vs the little guy

You see it in many cities that want high-speed rail or simple public transit. These projects have become unaffordable. Why? Not because of the labor or materials cost, but because every piece of land needed for such a project will require a protracted legal battle spanning many years in order to squeeze money from the government and determine a "fair value" that in the end is usually very inflated.

I think the US could find itself in a very sorry situation if we remain paralyzed when it comes to building publicly beneficial infrastructure. Meanwhile China (who I am loathe to imitate) is building itself into the 21st century overnight, while we litigate for years (or decades) over the abandoned lot or corner gas-station that was in the way of something that provides much more value to the public.

The appeal to personal feelings is also misguided. How would I feel if the State of Illinois decided that a new light rail project should run right through my house? Very, very bad! Burn the witches! But that's a textbook case of eminent domain, not an abuse; the only way to argue against it is to enter into a very unproductive argument about whether all eminent domain claims are abusive.

I disagree with Columbia in this case; the doctrine that says eminent domain comes into play simply because the benificiary can make the property more productive is unsettling. But it's still incumbent on us to make valid arguments.

In the U.S., this is specifically discussed in the fifth amendment to the Constitution: ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This suggests that government may choose to take private property for public use so long as the compensation is "just". Note that "just" may not be the price that you want the government to pay, but it might instead be based on some other theory of justice, such as the current market value for similar property.

Now, not everything allowed for by the Constitution is morally desirable. (Recall the "3/5ths of a person" compromise.) But the U.S. government does have a defensible rationale for eminent domain; our ancestors agreed to the Constitution, and we haven't ever amended that part of it.

However, the Constitution also says "public use." I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government.

Because sometimes individuals choose not to sell at the fair market value (e.g., not everyone sells their stock at the current stock price - in fact, some people choose to buy at that price. That's the definition of a fair market value.)

> And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans.

Sometimes this makes the plans dramatically more expensive and/or impossible. The canonical example is if a road needs to be built. It may be that there is _no_ viable route where all the existing property owners are willing to sell. This may either be because of personal attachments to the property or because they know that as the last holdout, they can demand a higher price.

In either case, "eminent domain" says the government can force the sale, paying a just compensation, in order to promote the public welfare.

Yes, this is imperfect (the owner may not consider it a fair price, or may not want to sell at any price). Yes, it is open to abuse. But yes, there are cases where it is needed, hence the inclusion in the Constitution, but with possibility of judicial and electoral review.

kb

Because without something like eminent domain, someone with a relatively worthless piece of property can inflate the value of it by holding an entire project hostage in exchange for their piece of land. If I have land that I ordinarily couldn't sell for more than a hundred thousand, but I know that the government will be doing a multi-million dollar project, I might demand a half a million for my land, in order to make a nice profit at the taxpayer's expense.

Now, this case is in more of a grey zone than that. It's not at the taxpayers expense, but at the expense of a private, non-profit institution. I'm not sure how I feel about that; it's certainly less objectionable than using eminent domain for a for-profit developer, but still makes me uneasy.

Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if you check other sources on this story, such as Columbia's own daily paper http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court... , you find that part of the reason the neighborhood has been determined "blighted", which is necessary for the justification that it's in the state's interest to buy the land and sell it to someone else, is that Columbia has already bought up many of the buildings in the area and left them abandoned. If that claim is true, then it certainly is outrageous to grant eminent domain on that basis; it means that any private developer who wants to gobble up land can just destroy the neighborhood, both driving down prices and allowing them to use eminent domain to buy up any remaining land.

The strident populist rhetoric in the New York Post article originally linked to is a bit misplaced. But given a bit more research, I'm inclined to agree on this particular case that there's something pretty rotten going on here.

> I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout.

The idea is that the city or state has an interest in cleaning up blighted neighborhoods; there are serious risks of crime, public health, land value, and the like with property is allowed to decay. When that really is the case, there is an argument for the government having the power to buy up whole blocks at a time in order to redevelop them (it is very difficult to impossible to fight blight a bit at a time, since no one wants to move in next to an abandoned building filled with squatters or drug dealers). However, it should not be the case that a private developer can cause blight buy buying and abandoning land, and then using that as an excuse to get the rest of the land through eminent domain.

See, that's a good thing. Stalin and Hitler tried seizing property "for the majority."