Subjective Law

GGuy has done some research on Montana Eminent Domain law. Not being a lawyer myself, I don’t know to who’s favor the contradictions would fall in a contest but it seems that there is a great deal of deference is given to the federal standard for “public use.”

This contradicts, in part, what the Billings Gazette said about the issue on Friday.

I guess we need more research and probably better (less ambiguous) law.

Importantly, Sen. Burns hopes to bring this issue up at the federal level according to a conversation David Crisp had with Conrad over the weekend.

I’m not so sure that there’s much the Congress can do here given the level of deference that the SCOTUS gave to state legislative authority, Anything that keeps the issue burning is a good thing though.

Interestingly there is a long and vibrant debate going on over at Kos. Armondo thinks the case was rightly decided, but his readers seem to differ. Especially in the straw poll going 54% to 37% against the ruling.

Interesting too that this issue, that really has simply affirmed the right of municipalities to do what they have been doing for a few decades, makes some progressives quite libertarian. It looks to me that a good majority of American’s support greater limits on municipal sovereignty in this regard. We’ll keep pushing.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2005 at 8:17 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.