{"id":5956,"date":"2016-02-26T21:20:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T21:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=5956"},"modified":"2016-02-26T21:20:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T21:20:26","slug":"trump-eminent-domain-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2016\/02\/trump-eminent-domain-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Mr. Trump, Victims of Eminent Domain Do Not “Get a Fortune” – Article by George C. Leef"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a>George C. Leef<\/span>
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
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Trump’s huge mistake about eminent domain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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During the debate among Republican presidential candidates last month, Jeb Bush hammered\u00a0Donald Trump on his abuse of eminent domain<\/a>. But Trump apparently sees nothing wrong in having government officials force people to sell their property.<\/p>\n

Trump replied,<\/p>\n

Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it, you wouldn\u2019t have roads, you wouldn\u2019t have hospitals, you wouldn\u2019t have anything. You would have schools, you wouldn\u2019t have bridges.<\/p>\n

And what a lot of people don\u2019t know because they were all saying, oh, you\u2019re going to take their property. When somebody \u2014 when eminent domain is used on somebody\u2019s property, that person gets a fortune. They at least get fair market value, and if they\u2019re smart, they\u2019ll get two or three times the value of their property.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This last assertion led George Mason law professor Ilya Somin (an expert on eminent domain) to quip at the Volokh Conspiracy<\/a>, \u201cIf eminent domain really were a good way to make a fortune, the Donald Trumps of the world would be lobbying the government to condemn their<\/em> property. But that rarely, if ever, happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put aside Trump\u2019s hyperbole about the supposed impossibility of schools, hospitals, and bridges without eminent domain. What I want to focus on is his claim that eminent domain is not objectionable because people who have their property taken make out just fine financially.<\/p>\n

That claim is simply indefensible. The truth is that people who lose their property to eminent domain proceedings are almost never made whole.<\/p>\n

Legal scholars have for many years been writing about the injustice that usually befalls people who have to settle for what the government deems \u201cjust compensation\u201d under the Fifth Amendment. I wouldn\u2019t expect Mr. Trump to know about that because he is too\u00a0busy making deals. But the kind of deals businessmen usually\u00a0make involve two parties who can say \u201cno,\u201d unless and until they think the deal will improve their positions.<\/p>\n

With eminent domain takings, however, the property owner can\u2019t say \u201cno,\u201d and usually must settle for much less than he or she would have bargained for in a voluntary setting.<\/p>\n

Professor Gideon Kanner has written extensively about the problem of inadequate compensation for people who\u2019ve been forced to sell under eminent domain. In his article \u201c[Un]Equal Justice under Law: The Invidiously Disparate Treatment of American Property Owners in Taking Cases<\/a>,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n

The true standard of compensation is not indemnity, but rather fair market value so artfully defined as to exclude factors that sellers and buyers in voluntary transactions would consider, and that the government need only pay for what it acquires, not for what the owner has lost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those losses include business goodwill, relocation expenses, and the emotional damage of having to leave a community where one may have strong ties. In the government\u2019s calculus, people are expected to suffer such losses as part of the price of living in America.<\/p>\n

As the Supreme Court stated in the 1949 takings case Kimball Laundry v. U.S.,<\/em><\/a> \u201cLoss to the owner of non-transferable values \u2026 is properly treated as part of the burden of common citizenship.\u201d That \u201ctough luck, property owner\u201d mindset still prevails.<\/p>\n

Knowing that they hold the high cards (and ultimately the guns) when they deal with property owners, government officials take full advantage. As Kanner observes, \u201cCondemning agencies regularly reap unjustified windfalls from the fact that the majority of their offers (including the many low-ball ones) are accepted without litigation or even involvement by a private appraiser or lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therefore, eminent domain causes many property owners to suffer uncompensated losses.<\/p>\n

Far from \u201cgetting a fortune\u201d or \u201ctwo or three times\u201d the market value of their property, most owners are left substantially worse off for their unwanted encounter with condemning government agencies. Few if any of them shrug off the losses as their part of the \u201cburden of common citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the eminent domain issue came up during a debate among presidential candidates, there is hardly anything that the president\u00a0can do to rectify the problem of under-compensation for property owners. He (or she) cannot issue an executive order mandating that property owners be\u00a0made whole.<\/p>\n

If there is to be a solution, it must come from the judiciary.<\/p>\n

Judges, and especially the justices of the Supreme Court, will have to stop ruling that merely because an individual is paid an amount deemed \u201cfair market value,\u201d the Fifth Amendment\u2019s requirement of \u201cjust compensation\u201d has been satisfied.<\/p>\n

It would also help property owners if the Supreme Court would overturn\u00a0Kelo v. New London<\/em><\/a> and establish\u00a0that property can only be taken for actual \u201cpublic use,\u201d as the Fifth Amendment requires, and\u00a0not for private<\/em> use that local politicians think might have some \u201cpublic benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since we are going to have confirmation hearings for a new member of the Court\u00a0eventually, it would be important\u00a0to find out precisely what the nominee thinks \u201cjust compensation\u201d and \u201cpublic use\u201d actually\u00a0mean.<\/p>\n

George Leef is the former book review editor of\u00a0The Freeman<\/em>. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education<\/a> and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a>, which requires that credit be given to the author.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George C. Leef ****************************** Trump’s huge mistake about eminent domain During the debate among Republican presidential candidates last month, Jeb Bush hammered\u00a0Donald Trump on his abuse of eminent domain. But Trump apparently sees nothing wrong in having government officials force people to sell their property. Trump replied, Eminent domain is an absolute necessity for a country, for our country. Without it, you wouldn\u2019t have roads, you wouldn\u2019t have hospitals, you wouldn\u2019t have anything. You would have schools, you wouldn\u2019t have…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,177],"tags":[329,616,4220,3356,4577,4256,1288,73,4229,228,587],"class_list":["post-5956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-justice","tag-business","tag-constitution","tag-donald-trump","tag-eminent-domain","tag-fifth-amendment","tag-george-c-leef","tag-justice-2","tag-president","tag-presidential-election","tag-private-property","tag-property-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5958,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5956\/revisions\/5958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}