Eminent Domain and Secondary Rent-Seeking
Until recently, the conventional wisdom had been that the Fifth Amendments public-use requirement is “a dead letter.” if that was once true, it appears that it no longer is. There are signs indicating that the public-use requirement is about to be resurrected. The most tangible signs, of course, are two recent cases. The first is County of Wayne v. Hathcock, where the Michigan Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision in the infamous case of Poletown Neighborhood Council v. City of Detroit. The second is Kelo v. City of New London, where the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed that the exercise of the eminent domain power for the purpose of private economic development does not necessarily violate the public-use requirement. The common denominator of both of these, and other recent cases, is that they involve uses of the state’s eminent domain power to condemn residential land in order to promote local economic development in the economically distressed communities. This was also, of course, the same scenario described in Poletown, a case that has been an anathema to commentators at both ends of the political spectrum.
