Public Use | Kelo

What’s up with that (sorta) snarky headline, you ask? After all, isn’t the PennEast v. New Jersey case, heard yesterday by the Supreme Court, a real honest-to-goodness eminent domain case about a pipeline?

Doesn’t the transcript show terms like “in rem,” “takings,” “eminent” and “eminent domain” were used a whole lot? Aren’t a lot of

Here’s the recently-filed cert petition in a case we’ve been following.

Rather than attempt to sum it up, we suggest you read the petition, especially the Questions Presented:

Montana Dakota Utility (hereinafter MDU), a private corporation, employed the power of eminent domain to procure an easement on Vern Behm’s farmland immediately along a pre-existing

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Under a Massachusetts statute, local redevelopment agencies have the power to respond to “decadent, substandard, and blighted open areas” either by creating an urban renewal project (redeveloping an area pursuant to a “detailed” and “comprehensive” plan; the statute expressly includes the power of eminent domain for urban renewal projects), or by a “demonstration” development (a

Here are the amici briefs supporting the property owner’s cert petition in a case we’ve been following for a long time, Eychaner v. City of Chicago, No. 20-1214.

This is the one in which the Illinois courts concluded that Chicago’s desire to prevent “future blight” is enough of a public use to support

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Come at me!
(Bolick, J., dissenting)

We have a Wexis alert for “Kelo,” because that’s one of the ways we keep up on the latest developments in this area. That alert doesn’t ping all that often, so we were all excited when yesterday, we received an alert notifying us of the Arizona Supreme

You remember that Seventh Circuit case challenging (as, inter alia, a no-public-use taking) the location of the Obama Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park under the public trust (from the home of the American public trust doctrine, Chicago)? We wrote about it in “Friends Without Benefits: CA7 Rejects Takings Claim For Obama Center

Check out the unusual facts in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals’ opinion in Scherich v. Wheeling Creed Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Comm’n, No. 19-1065 (Mar. 15, 2021).

This started back in 1990, when the Commission instituted a condemnation action to take two parcels belonging to the Scheriches for a dam, as

For you original MTV folks

Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following for a while (even since before the last time it went up to the Court). See this post (“The Chicago Way: City Taking Non-Blighted Property For Economic Development Was Not Pretextual Because…Studies“) and this one (“Illinois App: We

We’ve been meaning to post this one, a short per curiam opinion from the Ohio Supreme Court, for some time. Not because it deals with earth-shattering substantive eminent domain issues, but because it highlights a somewhat niche, but pretty important, procedural issue. 

Say an owner challenges the take, either by way of a public use