Supreme Court won’t hear Columbia University eminent domain case

December 16, 2010 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

Author: Timothy Sandefur

This got buried by this week’s big health care and delta smelt news, but the Supreme Court decided Monday that it will not review the eminent domain case from New York that involves Columbia University. PLF filed a brief urging the Court to take the case and explain just what constitutional limits on eminent domain still exist after the Kelo decision. You’ll remember that the swing vote in Kelo was provided by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose opinion tried to split the baby—saying on one hand that government should be able to do what it wants in eminent domain cases, and on the other hand, it still had to obey constitutional guidelines. Nobody really knows what that means. So although it’s not surprising that the Court turned the case down—it takes an eminent domain case about every twenty years—we thought there might be hope that the Court would explain since there have been four new justices since Kelo, especially since there have been four new justices in the interim.

Our friend Ilya Somin has blogged about the case here.