Favorite Property Quotes

The holiday brings "light blogging" as they say, so instead of a substantive post, we're listing some of our favorite quotations about property rights, eminent domain, and the like.

Have any of your own? Send them, and I'll post.

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Such difficulties indicate that the dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less than the right to speak or the right to travel, is, in truth, a "personal" right, whether the "property" in question be a welfare check, a home, or a savings account. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized.

Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 504 U.S. 538 (1972)

But simply denominating a governmental measure as a "business regulation" does not immunize it from constitutional challenge on the ground that it violates a provision of the Bill of Rights. . . . We see no reason why the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as much a part of the Bill of Rights as the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment, should be relegated to the status of a poor relation in these comparable circumstances.

Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1992)

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

...

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

James Madison

The power of eminent domain, next to that of conscription of man power for war, is the most awesome grant of power under the law of the land.

Winger v. Aires, 89 A.2d 521 (Pa. 1952)

Although we have been called upon the resolve several rather abstract issues arising under our laws and constitution, we undertake that responsibility mindful that these cases, in a very tangible way, involve a real community, and the real people who live, work and own property there.

Harrison Redev. Agency v. DeRose, 942 A.2d 59 (N.J. Super. 2008)

I do not understand the Court to suggest that rights of property are to be defined solely by state law, or that there is no federal constitutional barrier to the abrogation of common law rights by Congress or a state government. The constitutional terms "life, liberty, and property" do not derive their meaning solely from the provisions of positive law. They have a normative dimension as well, establishing a sphere of private autonomy which government is bound to respect.

PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980) (Marshall, J., concurring)

The Fifth Amendment's guarantee that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.

Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40 (1960)

While the consent of individual officials representing the United States cannot "estop" the United States, it can lead to the fruition of a number of expectancies embodied in the concept of "property" expectancies that, if sufficiently important, the Government must condemn and pay for before it takes over the management of the landowner's property.

Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164 (1979)

In summing up, it's the Constitution, it's Mabo, it's justice, it's law, it's the vibe ... and ...

No, that's it, it's the vibe!

I rest my case.

Attorney Dennis Denuto, The Castle (1997)