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Comment by baruz | Hacker News Reader

I remember that decision and am still indignant about it. Why should the government give private land to a different private party? If the government is going to take it for public use, I can see the reasoning, but using eminent domain to transfer to private owners is fraught.

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It was a terrible decision.

Not that those are rare.

[EDIT] To make this a little more substantive, on an issue where they extremely plausibly could have decided otherwise, they elected to go for the option that is plainly, guaranteed to be less-just. There is no universe in which anyone with a brain could believe the overwhelming result of this decision wouldn't be to benefit people with power and money at the expense of those without power and money.

> the city's use of eminent domain was permissible under the Takings Clause, because the general benefits the community would enjoy from economic growth qualified as "public use"

Subjective decisions are bad, like we're seeing in other areas. "General benefits" can mean anything if you've got cooperative judges you crammed the courts with.

> Not that those are rare.

Heller comes to mind, even as a 2a supporter.

What did Heller get wrong? In the majority opinion[1] they do a pretty good job of explaining why they think the right to bear arms applies to the people, not just the militia, and how the amendment enshrines an individual right, not a collective one. In contrast, the dissenting justices can't seem to agree on why the second amendment doesn't apply. Stevens argues that the right to bear arms and other rights (the right to assemble, the right to petition the government) are collective, not individual. He also claims that the second amendment only applies to the militia, but he ignores that the historical sources he cites define the militia as all people capable of bearing arms. Breyer's dissent defines the militia differently, and Breyer spends most of his time arguing that the government can restrict the rights of law-abiding people if the government thinks that doing so will serve its interests (in this case, fighting urban crime). Breyer applies this argument selectively, since if he evaluated other constitutional rights in the same way, it would gut all of them.

Banning law-abiding individuals from possessing firearms may or may not be good policy, but it's hard to see how it's constitutional. If people want to change that policy, they'll need to amend the constitution.

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20100531191739/http://www.suprem...

> If people want to change that policy, they'll need to amend the constitution.

Herein lies the problem: it's just too hard to amend the constitution. Here in Ireland it's just a referendum. Some pass, some don't. It's a living document that changes (slowly) over time.

Heller was a 5/4 decision and a number of lower courts ruled different from the Supreme Court. It's not as clear-cut as you're making it out. The US constitution is vague enough that in many cases you can give several different reasonable interpretations. Endless discussion over what a comma written 250 years ago may or may not mean is quite frankly deeply and profoundly idiotic way of governing a country.

The worst part is the development didn't happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

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