We can obtain these things only through the fruits of our labor or through charity (leaving aside the possibility of violating others’ rights through theft, either directly or by using the government as our agent to take from another and give to us). If we are to live, we must also provide for food, clothing, shelter, and other needs and luxuries. Other forms of property are no less important, for they are necessary to sustain our lives. Notice that Locke and Madison include among “property” people’s very lives, their property in their own existence and the right to preserve that existence. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. In a word, as a man is said to have right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
#MASTER OF MY DOMAIN SAYING FREE#
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.”Įarlier in the same essay, Locke explains the importance of property even more starkly:Ī man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. The Founding Fathers knew well the importance of private property in “securing the blessings of liberty.” The Declaration of Independence asserts our unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which was derived from John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), in which Locke describes our reasons for forming government in the first place: man “is willing to join in society with others. Unfortunately, no action has been taken on the bill in the Senate, where it has languished in the Judiciary Committee for over seven months. 4128, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005, which would deny Federal economic development funds to state and local governments that utilize eminent domain for this purpose. Thus, the vocabulary may have changed from “economic development” to “blight,” but the recipe for takings abuse remains the same.Īt the federal level, the House of Representatives last November overwhelmingly passed H.R. According to Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation, laws like those in Alabama and Texas leave open the door to eminent domain abuse by still allowing governments to take land they deem “blighted.” While “blighted” property traditionally refers to property so dangerous to the public health that it must be removed, the term is so vaguely defined in the new legislation that it could mean anything the government wishes, including a perceived “need” for economic development. Several states-including Alabama, Delaware, Ohio, and Texas-have succeeded in passing eminent domain reforms, but most of these do not have any real teeth. Sadly, momentum for the issue seems to have waned in most of the country and the initial indignation over the Supreme Court’s decision has been met not with a bang, but a whimper. Over one million signatures were submitted in support of the measure last month, far more than the nearly 600,000 required to qualify for the ballot.īut what has been the result of all the fist-waving and teeth-gnashing following the Kelo decision? One of those initiatives, the “Protect Our Homes” initiative, may make the November 2006 ballot, pending signature verification. In California alone, there have been 87 bills and several ballot initiatives proposed. Over the past year, at least 325 measures in 47 states have been proposed to protect against eminent domain abuses at the state level. This spawned a healthy revolt against abusive land seizures by governments across the nation. Opinion polls have shown opposition to the use of eminent domain for economic development ranging from 70 percent to over 90 percent.
The decision sparked outrage among many Americans, who viewed the process of taking land from one private party and giving it to another, even with “just compensation,” to be fundamentally unfair and an abuse of government power. The decision affirmed the ability of governments to forcibly take private property for “public purposes,” even if those purposes serve fairly narrow private interests. City of New London eminent domain decision. Property rights issues are once again on the minds of many Americans as we mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s now infamous 5-4 Kelo v.
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