The right to own and keep one’s property. Render the Supreme Court decision on Kelo v. New London impotent.
Join us in the fight to get S. 48, Private Property Rights Protection Act out of the Finance Committee and onto the floor for a vote!
(1) The founding fathers held dear the fundamental rights associated with the ownership of private property.
(2) In 1788, James Madison recognized the connection between freedom and property rights when he wrote in Federalist No. 10 that the right to own property originates in free thought and that it is the Government’s job to protect such rights.
(3) In 1792, in an essay entitled `Property’, James Madison wrote, `where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.’.
(4) In the `Property’ essay, James Madison also wrote, `Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.’.
(5) In 1775, the Virginia patriot Arthur Lee wrote, `The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.’.
(6) In 1783, Benjamin Franklin wrote, `All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of.’.
(7) In 1787, John Adams wrote, `The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.’.
(8) In 1795, Supreme Court Justice William Patterson wrote, in the case Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance: `From these passages it is evident; that the right of acquiring . . . property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man. Men have a sense of property: Property is necessary to their subsistence, and correspondent to their natural wants and desires; its security was one of the objects, that induced them to unite in society. No man would become a member of a community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and industry. The preservation of property then is a primary object of the social compact, and . . . was made a fundamental law.’.
(9) In 1798, the Supreme Court considered the case of Calder v. Bull, in which Justice Samuel Chase recognized that government action which is `contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority’ which he explained with the following example: `. . . a law that takes property from A and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers . . . .’.
(10) On March 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln stated that the institution of slavery is reprehensible because it offends the right of man to keep the fruits of his own labor and thus denies man the right to own property.
(11) In a stark departure from the honor and recognition given individual private property rights under the United States Constitution, the United States Supreme Court in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, issued a decision on June 23, 2005, by a 5 to 4 vote, that eminent domain may be used to seize property for the purpose of private economic development.
(12) Justice Sandra Day O’Connor rightly stated in her dissenting opinion in Kelo, `the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.’.
(13) Justice O’Connor further wrote, `any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.’.
(14) Justice O’Connor also wrote about the effects of the Kelo ruling: `To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings `for public use’ is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property–and thereby effectively to delete the words `for public use’ from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.’.
(15) Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, `I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution.’.
(16) The City Council of New London, Connecticut, created the New London Development Corporation (`NLDC’) as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and authorized the NLDC to purchase property or to acquire private property for economic development purposes by exercising eminent domain in the City’s name.
(17) NLDC’s actions, which were the subject of the lawsuit in the Kelo case, were made possible by numerous Federal grants and direct appropriations, including: $2,000,000 from the Economic Development Administration in 2001, $750,000 from the Department of Labor in 2000, $125,000 from the Fannie Mae Foundation in 2000, and an earmark of $100,000 in the FY2001 VA-HUD appropriations Act (Public Law 106-988).
(18) The Kelo decision stands as a repudiation of the principle of the Fifth Amendment, as embodied by the writings of James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, and also as had previously been recognized by the Supreme Court.
(19) Congress has encouraged the State and local governments’ practice of using eminent domain to further economic development by using the Federal purse strings to incentivize such practices through Federal grants and direct appropriations.
(20) Congress has also created extensive tax-based incentives to encourage State and local governments to condemn private property for economic development purposes.
(21) In a joint amicus brief, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Association of Retired Persons stated, `The takings that result [from the Court's decision in Kelo] will disproportionately affect and harm the economically disadvantaged and, in particular, racial and ethnic minorities and the elderly.’.
(22) The Supreme Court’s decision to expand eminent domain is also troubling for religious institutions, as this ruling will disproportionately negatively impact these institutions as they are often non-profit and almost universally tax-exempt. As a result, the property owned by religious institutions is particularly vulnerable to this type of taking, as the ruling of the court disfavors non-profit, tax-exempt property owners in favor of for-profit, tax generating businesses.
(23) It is in the best interest of the American people for Congress to prohibit Federal funding and to restrict tax benefits from accruing to any person, party, or governmental authority who would seek to acquire private property through seizure by eminent domain for economic development purposes.
(24) Congress can restrict the use of Federal funds and the availability of Federal tax incentives to discourage the activities of State and local governments.
(25) It is the responsibility and obligation of Congress to act to protect private property rights and to further the protections afforded to private parties by the United States Constitution under the Fifth Amendment and to prevent the unjust use of the power of eminent domain.