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Property Law and Real Estate

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Eminent domain

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Politics Of The Takings Clauses, Mila Versteeg Apr 2015

The Politics Of The Takings Clauses, Mila Versteeg

Northwestern University Law Review

A long-standing consensus exists that the arbitrary or excessive expropriation of private property by a country hurts its economic growth. Although constitutions can play an important role in protecting private property, remarkably little is known about how they actually restrict the power of eminent domain and whether such restrictions are associated with reduced de facto expropriation risks. This Essay fills that gap by presenting original data on the procedural and substantive protections in constitutional takings clauses from 1946 to 2013. Its main finding is that no observable relationship exists between de jure constitutional restrictions on the power of eminent domain …


Eminent Domain And The Psychology Of Property Rights: Proposed Use, Subjective Attachment, And Taker Identity, Janice Nadler, Shari Seidman Diamond Jan 2008

Eminent Domain And The Psychology Of Property Rights: Proposed Use, Subjective Attachment, And Taker Identity, Janice Nadler, Shari Seidman Diamond

Faculty Working Papers

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, allowing governments to force the sale of private property to promote economic development, provoked bipartisan and widespread public outrage. Given that the decision in Kelo was rendered virtually inevitable by the Court's earlier public use decisions, what accounts for the dread and dismay that the decision provoked among ordinary citizens? We conducted two experiments that represent an early effort at addressing a few of the many possible causes underlying the Kelo backlash. Together, these studies suggest that the constitutional focus on public purpose in Kelo does not fully, …