"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the dust settles on the Kelo case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that it's OK by them that New London, CT, took private property to -- at root -- enhance their tax base, interesting views have been coming to the fore.
One of them is that those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Constitution should applaud the Supremes ruling. Why? Well, the argument goes, this is a state matter, not a federal one. The Supreme Court and the federal government simply don't have jurisdiction to tell New London and CT what they can and cannot do. Perhaps the most prolific, insightful exponent of this view is Stephan Kinsella, whose views on the case can be found here.
Trying to be fair here, but what would that really mean?
It would mean, among other things, that the Constitution doesn't authorize the Supreme Court to stop UT from making Mormonism a state religion, HI from allowing human sacrifice, MA from allowing mobs to burn witches at the stake, and SC from nullifying the 13th and 14th Amendments and imposing slavery on anyone named Calhoun. (Apparently it does not allow SC to make me, a Virginia resident, a slave in SC, which is a comforting thought.) Extreme examples, surely, but if one reads the Constitution, nowhere does it say that the Feds has the power to stop the States from doing such things.
This is all a bit of a conundrum. I'm not a lawyer or a constitutional expert, but I did reread the document, searching for a literalist counter, and I found this:
"Article. III. Section. 2. Clause 1: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority...."
This was controversial in the Republic's early days, and there was confusion about what it meant. The landmark case Marbury v. Madison established the principle of judicial review, which still holds to this day.
Still, on the specific point, did the Supremes have jurisdiction? Does "all" "Laws of the United States" apply to just the Feds, or both the Feds and States?
It all starts to make my head hurt. But, to me, Kelo is a profound warning sign for what it means to be an American. If the government -- at any level -- can take someone's house to maximize its tax base, well, then, Houston, we have a problem.
-Robert Capozzi