Commentary

Life After Kelo: Looking Back and Forward
By Chuck Muth

It’s one of the most hated Supreme Court decisions in decades, and it happened just three years ago. In Kelo vs. New London, a bare majority of the justices decided that it was OK for local governments looking to increase tax revenue to take land from their citizens and give it to a developer. Three years after winning the right to take the property of Susette Kelo and her neighbors, there hasn’t been any public benefit in any form from the land that city officials took. In fact, the city doesn’t even know what to do with the land now that officials’ handpicked developer couldn’t muster the financing necessary to build anything.