Conclusion

Somin (this volume) demonstrates that Kelo v. City of New London (545 U.S. 469 (2005)) produced a dramatic political backlash as states across the country passed statutes and referenda which appeared to restrict eminent domain powers.1 Benson and Brown (this volume) explain that the backlash against the Kelo decision actually is another in a long chain of backlashes against government efforts to expand the scope and strength of the claim that the state is the actual property owner (i.e., that the population simply serves as stewards for the state). As Mises (1945, 58) emphasizes, all types of “Governments have always looked askance at private property…. It is the nature of the man handling the apparatus of compulsion and coercion … to strive at subduing all spheres of human life to its immediate influence.” As further evidence of both expanding government efforts to strengthen government-ownership claims and of citizen resistance, note that the state-level Kelo backlash was not the only effort to restrict government takings. Ramsey (2007, 1) suggests, for instance, the “property rights movement,” or what might be called the takings backlash, produced at least two “notable” events within a short period of time: “the reaction to the Kelo case in 2005 and the passage of Measure 37 in Oregon in 2004.” Measure 37 was a backlash against regulatory takings rather than eminent-domain takings (the history of and reactions to Oregon’s land-use regulation efforts are discussed below). As Gieseler et al. (2006, 93), explain, “Oregon’s land-use regulation system had become a labyrinth of unreasonably restrictive regulations that made no allowances for the costs and burdens imposed on property owners.