In what is becoming typical of most of the court’s controversial rulings, the vote was by just a 5-4 margin.
Voting to allow local government’s increased powers to take your land, home and business were the four usual liberal suspects: Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer and Stevens. Siding with them, as he has done increasingly over years, was Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy.
The Great Communicator must be rolling over in his grave these days about that appointment. Caving in to the political pressures against outstanding dream nominee Robert Bork was one thing. But compromising with the increasingly nightmarish Kennedy has to be considered a whole other matter entirely. The liberals fretted all those years with Reagan, and ended up with one of their own on the top bench anyway.
But back to the matter at hand. The case that the court was deciding involved the small Connecticut town of New London. A few years back, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Corporation decided that it wanted to locate a facility in the town.
Good news for local business, right? Everyone in the community on board. The trouble started when the commission formed to evaluate the plans for the Pfizer development decided to get ambitious.
Plans began to expand in city officials’ minds for an entire waterfront business park initiative. They foresaw hotels, clubs, restaurants, even a new Coast Guard Museum, all attached to the Pfizer property and aimed at bringing tourists to the area.
Problem was, some folks, including Kelo (pictured) owned houses in the development area, and they didn’t want to sell.
