June 23, 2005
It’s a cold day in hell…
…but I find myself in agreement with the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that city governments can seize and raze private homes in order to make way for private developers if the government feels the development is in the general public interest—which doesn’t seem to have to mean more than new jobs and tax revenue.
The conservatives—Scalia, Thomas, Rhenquist, and O’Conner—represented the dissent, and I have to agree with them here. I think this sets a terrible precident for the power of private developers to seize land and destroy people’s homes, including uprooting people who have lived there for decades. Not to mention that some of these homes have stood for nearly a century, and the architecture is worth preserving. But generally speaking it’s the very idea of corporate interests invasively intruding upon people’s lives that upsets me so much.
Posted by alex at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)