The exchanges from The Corner’s legal/constitutional brains on the SCOTUS

decision about eminent domain have been fascinating. I don’t know diddly

about the law involved, & if I ventured an opinion I’d get swatted like a

bug by these big guys. There’s one broad and general policy point I’d like

to raise, though.

As conservatives we are of course all watchful for, and suspicious of,

overweening state power. Governments do sometimes need to be able to act,

though. The Tory in me appreciates what a British Prime Minister (though

not a Tory) once called “the smack of firm government,” when it’s

appropriate.

There are quite large areas of public life where the problem is not the govt

doing too much, but govt frustrated in doing anything at all. The state of

public works in New York City illustrates the point. It’s little short of

miraculous when govt here gets ANYTHING done, let alone a major public works

project. (Look at the decades-long struggle to set up public toilets for

the use of New Yorkers.) Yes, yes, I know, the Connecticut decision

involved private development, not public works, but the eminent domain

principle apparently comes in to both cases. Consider the paralysis over

the World Trade Center site. If use of urban land were not such a tar pit

of regulation & litigation, surely a vigorous govt, exercising eminent

domain, might have done something with the site by now.

Yay for private property rights and down with govt usurpations. No argument

about that as a general principle. When govt needs to act, though, it ought

to be able to do so without unnecessary impediments & infinite delays, &

private citizens, properly compensated, should yield their rights.

All right, go on, swat me.