Thanks to Dwight Merriam for the heads-up on “Driven Out,” the upcoming New York Times book review of Little Pink House – A True Story of Defiance and Courage, about the infamous 2005 eminent domain case Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005). The review laments the Supreme Court’s “virtually incidental” role in the book: “The law itself barely gets a walk-on bit, withthe Supreme Court’s analysis of the case accorded less than aparagraph.” The reason?
That’s because long before the court determined in 2005 that a town inConnecticut could use the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment toseize private homes in order to transform a lunch-pail community into ahip urban center, this case had been tried and decided in the court ofmade-for-TV movies. The story of a little pink house in New London andits determined owner launched a thousand enraged editorials, galvanizeda movement to condemn Justice David Souter’s New Hampshire home andeventually led more than 40 state legislatures to change their laws oneminent domain. Throughout this ruckus, the court’s actual opinion wasso much constitutional wallpaper.
I just finished reading Little Pink House (available from Amazon here), and it is true that it provides only a smattering of detail about the legal issues involved and the decisions by the Connecticut Superior Court, Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Those details — while no doubt fascinating to lawyers — would likely have made the book pretty dry to everyone else.
The review, however, finds these omissions troubling, and suggests that it was not “judicial whim or ideology that knocked down Kelo’s community” but courts “dispassionately applying state law.” Again true, but what I appreciated about the book was that it attempted to explain why the case touched a raw nerve and set off a firestorm of protest by detailing the lives and personalities of the players. Legal cases don’t become iconic for no reason, and when the law is out of touch with the people it serves, it should not be a surprise when a decision by the court of last resort — even when it dispassionately applies the law — is not the last word on the subject.