Opinion ID: 848684
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Majority Abandons the Common Understanding

Text: The majority's application of its sophisticated in the law approach to this case is unnecessary and subject to abuse: it invites the erosion of the limitations placed on the exercise of eminent domain. As noted by Justice COOLEY, [a] little investigation will show that any definition [of `public use'] attempted would exclude some subjects that properly should be included in, and include some subjects that must be excluded from, the operation of the words `public use'.... [41] Nevertheless, the majority opines that transfer of condemned property to a private entity, seen through the eyes of an individual sophisticated in the law at the time of ratification of our 1963 Constitution, would be appropriate in one of three contexts: (1) where `public necessity of the extreme sort' requires collective action; (2) where the property remains subject to public oversight after transfer to a private entity; and (3) where the property selected is due to facts of independent public significance, rather than the interests of the private entity to which the property is eventually transferred. [42] The majority's categorization of Michigan case law addressing transfers of property to private entities is better suited to articles in law journals that have no force of law than it is to judicial opinions. If, instead of the common understanding of public use, future courts rely on facts of independent public significance to determine whether a condemnation is for a public use, then it is easy to imagine how the people's limit on the exercise of eminent domain might be eroded. For example, a municipality could declare the lack of a two-car garage to be evidence of blight, as has been attempted in Lakewood, Ohio [43] or justify condemning a small brake repair business so that the property can be used for a hardware store, as has been attempted in Mesa, Arizona. [44] The majority's sophisticated in the law approach makes the intended protections from such encroachments on protected rights less certain because it moves away from the constitutional text. The majority's categories are based on what the majority has determined is the sophisticated understanding of case law. However, sophisticated categorizations should not replace the traditional approach to ascertaining the common understanding of the ratifiers. Justice COOLEY aptly summarized the public use limitations as follows: [T]he public use implies a possession, occupation, and enjoyment of the land by the public at large, or by public agencies; and due protection to the rights of private property will preclude the government from seizing it in the hands of the owner, and turning it over to another on vague grounds of public benefit to spring from the more profitable use to which the latter may devote it. We find ourselves somewhat at sea, however, when we undertake to define, in the light of the judicial decisions, what constitutes a public use.[ [45] ] Justice COOLEY'S scholarly treatise follows this statement with a review of judicial decisions from various states regarding the meaning of public use and concludes that public use has a meaning much controlled by necessity, and somewhat different from that which it generally bears. [46] Contrary to the majority's suggestion, Justice Cooley does not justify invoking a cadre of legal sophisticates to help ascertain the meaning of public use, rather it reveals that public use is indeed a constitutional term that must be understood not in its more popular character, but rather in the sense fixed upon the words in legal and constitutional history where they have been employed for the protection of popular rights. [47] The sense fixed upon the term in legal and constitutional history is, in Justice COOLEY'S words, familiar to the people. [48] The facts of each case involving a proposed condemnation should be considered in light of the public use limitation on the exercise of eminent domain as the limitation would have been commonly understood by the people, learned and unlearned, who ratified the Constitution. This ensures that the sense fixed upon the words in the legal and constitutional history continue to serve to protect the popular rights. [49] Contrary to the majority's suggestion, the people's common understanding is not fictionalized. Ante at 780, n. 48. The people who ratified art. 10, § 2 do understand the limitations they imposed on the exercise of eminent domain. As stated by Justice Cooley: it is always an invasion of liberty and of right when one is compelled to part with his possessions on grounds which are only colorable. A person may be very unreasonable in insisting on retaining his lands; but half the value of free institutions consists in the fact that they protect every man in doing what he shall choose, without liability to be called account for his reasons or motives, so long as he is doing only that which he has a right to do. [ Ryerson, supra at 342.] Nevertheless, the majority substitutes the people's common understanding with that of those sophisticated in the law. Apparently, the current majority does not share Justice COOLEY'S respect for every person's understanding of their most basic and established constitutional protections.