Judges and Other Children of Privilege

J. David Breemer takes 'em down a peg:

Nothing in the Court's precedent or in the text of the Takings Clause mandated these decisions. In fact, in each case, such considerations permitted the opposite results, results that protected, rather than denigrated private property. Since the Court nevertheless chose to cut back on property rights, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Court simply does not believe such rights have an important role in checking government power and preserving liberty.

Indeed, the Court's decisions are disturbingly candid about its desire to make private property subservient to the whim of government decision-making. This deferential view of the government's power to appropriate property without meaningful constitutional restraint has little in common with the understanding of the Framers.

The Court is, in fact, very close to having more in common with Lenin, when it comes to private property, than it does with Madison. And Madison's ideological heirs may have legitimate cause to wonder whether the Framers made a mistake in creating such a powerful and autonomous judicial branch.

How important were property rights to the Founding Fathers? Important enough that the supreme injustice of chattel slavery was enshrined in the Constitution, as even man's personal freedom was deemed secondary to another man's claim that slaves were property.

In the eyes of the Court, we are now all slaves.