Simple Sense From Ohio High Court
The Orange County (CA) Register's Steven Greenhut had this article praising the Ohio Supreme Court's eminent domain decision.
Simplicity is the friend of freedom, obfuscation its foe.
And so the enemies of freedom would have us believe that the Constitution's fairly simple words don't precisely matter – only the penumbras and complicated modern interpretations. Which explains why the high court often makes rulings that seem grievously at odds with the founding text. For instance, in Kelo vs. City of New London (Conn.), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that cities can take private property and give it to other private parties even though the Fifth Amendment clearly limits such takings to "public uses."
We've all gotten used to this type of thing. But once in a while, clarity and simplicity win out, and judges actually read the words of our founders and apply them as they were meant to be applied. It happened last week, and I'm still stunned and slightly giddy over it.