Eroding Constitutional Limits on Governmental Takings

by Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is an assistant professor of law at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Added to cato.org on July 11, 2009

This article appeared in the Detroit Free Press on July 16, 2009. Below is an excerpt. Read the full article HERE

It’s not easy for a judge to undermine property rights further than the Supreme Court did in 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London. But Judge Sonia Sotomayor, now herself up for the Court, succeeded. In the 2006 case of Didden v. Village of Port Chester she signed on to perhaps the worst federal court property rights decision in recent memory. In Kelo the Court held that the government can condemn a person’s property and transfer it to someone else in order to promote economic development. In Didden, Judge Sotomayor’s panel went further, upholding the government’s condemnation of property after the owners refused to pay extortion money to a politically influential private developer.