Pig in Parlor

Pigs in the parlor: in re Supreme Court vs. the environment - takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution

by Paul Rauber

Comments

* 1

* 2

* 3

* Next

In re Supreme Court vs. the Environment

Now that the final conflict is over, capitalism triumphant is getting down to business here at home. In the next few months, the United States Supreme Court will decide whether the sanctity of private property outweighs the government's authority to protect the environment. Of course, property-rights advocates wouldn't put it that way: Sure, they say, the government can continue to enact laws protecting fragile wetlands, endangered species, imperiled coastal areas, whatever it wants--it just has to be prepared to pay landowners top dollar not to despoil their properties.

Related Results

* Erie County Fair / Today's events

* Erie County Fair / Today's events

* Erie County Fair / Today's events

* Erie County Fair / Today's events

* Keeping pigs out of parlors: using nuisance law to affect the location of...

Even before the high court rules, lower courts are already putting property first. A New Jersey company was awarded $2.68 million because it was refused permission to build houses on 12 acres of wetlands. A mining firm in Florida received $1 million compensation for not polluting groundwater. And when the Interior Department refused to allow a strip mine in Wyoming, it was ordered to pay the company $150 million.

"There is a revolution going on that almost no one knows about," warns Stanford law professor Robert Girard, "one that is going to cripple the environmental movement." The manifesto of these revolutionaries--conservative legal scholars, right-wing think tanks, and "wise use" anti-environmental activists--is the "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

For the past 200 years this clause has been employed largely in cases...