It’s quite unclear what you think the supreme court should have done. If they were to rule otherwise, they’d have to come up with a general rule or class of activity that was unconstitutional to consider the public good. They’ve never done that before, because the eminent domain rules don’t give them that power. To do so would have been defining the public good.

Personally, I feel this ruling abuses eminent domain and lets the powerful hold sway over the poor.

Agreed, a thousand times agreed. Some abuses of power are perfectly constitutional. This is one of them.

Now we can simply uproot economically depressed areas? How then will we define economically depressed? This slope isn’t just slippery, it’s vertical.

There’s no “Now.” This decision upheld the status quo. Eminent domain has been used for this purpose many times before. Each case is different, but for the most part I don’t like it either. But we can’t fall down a slope we’re already at the bottom of.

The court can’t solve all of our problems. Sometimes, we must fight bad policy through more traditional routes. Working to elect non-buffoonish city councils is a good place to start.

The court found that if an economic project creates new jobs, increases tax and other city revenues, and revitalizes a depressed (even if not blighted) urban area, it qualifies as a public use. The court also found that government delegation of eminent domain power to a private entity was also constitutional as long as the private entity served as the legally authorized agent of the government.

Of course I don’t want them to define public good, but they recognizing the difference between what that has usually been defined as and what is happening in this case is needed. Personally, I feel this ruling abuses eminent domain and lets the powerful hold sway over the poor. Now we can simply uproot economically depressed areas? How then will we define economically depressed? This slope isn’t just slippery, it’s vertical.

To me, that seems really unfair. But hey, that’s just me.

I thought they simply a) saw no reason to overturn eminent domain as a concept (it’s in the consititution, you’d need an ammendment to overturn it) b) declined to get involved in local disputes over eminent domain and what the “public good” might mean locally (since getting involved would mean a ton of other cases in the future).

I thinkt this has been an emotional issue and widely misunderstood. They said it’s local government’s job to establish the paramaters of eminent domain locally and now local governments are responding. What’s the problem?