Eminent Domain

According to Matt Drudge, President Bush has issued an executive order strongly supporting the rights of property owners. The policy is as follows...

It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.

If you are wondering why an order like this would be issued today, just ask Suzette Kelo. Many thanks to Howard Bashman for refreshing my memory that today is the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court handing down the Kelo decision.

EDIT: Ilya Somin at Volokh thinks that this order this a whole lot of nothing. The problem lies in the language of the order...

Read carefully, the order does not in fact bar condemnations that transfer property to other private parties for economic development. Instead, it permits them to continue so long as they are "for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken."

If you've studied land use law, zoning, eminent domain, and all of those other fun things, you know that "general welfare" and "public purpose" language creates a hole big enough for a truck to drive through. The courts will almost always defer to the legislature's determination of what generally benefits the public. This executive order isn't really a major change in policy, and it certainly doesn't kill Kelo. I don't know if the president could even make that kind of policy change via executive order. I guess the only thing it really does is commemorate Kelo turning one year old.