With a twisted, 5-4 ruling in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court wrongly declared that government is entitled to take private property from one owner and transfer it to another private interest. Governments at various levels have used that ruling to seize property and hand it over to different owners who will develop it in such a way as to generate more tax revenue for government.
That is an appalling misinterpretation of the eminent domain provision in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment does provide for limited government taking of private property. But the property must then be put to a clear “public use” – such as a road or a military base – not turned into a private development.
The Supreme Court appears to have no intention of revising its bad ruling, though. It recently turned down the appeal of New York state’s planned seizing of private property that will be handed over to Columbia University for expansion of its campus. So the landowners will be forced to sell to Columbia, even though it is a private university, not a public facility.
We cannot judge whether Columbia’s expansion is, in itself, a good idea. Perhaps it is. But that is beside the point. The university should not be able to acquire the land in question against the will of the rightful landowners by use of the coercive power of government.
Taking private property from an unwilling seller is not a pleasant prospect even when there is a legitimate public use for it. But it is even worse when the land is wrongly handed over to another private interest.