Remember Kelo? Yes, I still think it was correctly decided. But you know the principle argued by those who think Kelo wrongly decided was the excuse that Robert Moses, the famous New York power broker who directed the building and development of New York City in the mid 20th Century, used to deny Walter O'Malley his dream of a domed stadium in Brooklyn. More.
In 1953, Moses wrote to O'Malley, after O'Malley's request for the City's assistance and cooperation that:
It is obviously your thought that we can go out and condemn property for your new Dodger field just where you want it. . . . This is absolutely out of the question as any good lawyer can tell you . . . since the establishment of a new Dodger Stadium is not in and of itself, a public purpose.
Moses was full of it as he had condemned numerous properties for private development and innumerable private property for some public monstrosities like the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. He just hated O'Malley's guts. And, in no small part, caused the Dodgers to leave Brooklyn.
The story of Robert Moses is one of the most fascinating of the 20th Century and Robert Caro's biography of Moses is ine of the greatest biographies ever written. But here we are discussing one small part of that history - how Moses's hubris, arrogance and detestation of Walter O'Malley played the major role in the Brooklyn Dodgers leaving for Los Angeles:
TUCKED among Moses' papers are letters to, about and from Walter O'Malley. They tell a remarkable story: O'Malley, it turns out, was desperate to stay in Brooklyn. The very public debate in 1956 about the domed stadium was, these letters show, merely the endgame for the Dodgers in Brooklyn. Moses had already sealed their dark fate.
O'Malley began courting Moses in 1953, hoping to persuade him to condemn land where he might build a new ballpark. Moses was initially willing; in fact, he even considered letting O'Malley build on a site near Pratt Institute. Then Moses changed his mind. Too congested, he wrote. He offered Bedford-Stuyvesant instead. It was not, by his own admission, an attractive location. But if O'Malley didn't take it, he would get nothing else.
Moses was stiffarming O'Malley. He had no intention of giving hiom anything attractive:
O'Malley, possessed with the soul of a salesman, pretended he did not hear him. ''My dear Bob,'' he wrote, ''Your letter leaves me with some hope that when we get together, a way will be found for a new Dodger stadium.'' ''Dear Walter,'' Moses replied, ''Let me see if I can simplify this matter.'' Which he did, once again, by saying no.
. . . In January 1956, by now weary of O'Malley, Moses wrote to an aide, ''I think we can agree in advance on what the outcome will be as far as the Dodgers are concerned, but it is necessary to show that our opposition is based on something other than prejudice.''
But what about Kelo? Was Moses right? Was "private use" even for a public purpose not a legal basis for a taking? Certainly not by 1954. For in 1954, the Supreme Court decided the case Berman v. Parker:
Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is clear. For the power of eminent domain is merely the means to the end. See Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., 153 U.S. 525, 529-530; United States v. Gettysburg Electric R. Co., 160 U.S. 668, 679. Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the means by which it will be attained is also for Congress to determine. Here, one of the means chosen is the use of private enterprise for redevelopment of the area. Appellants argue that this makes the project a taking from one businessman for the benefit of another businessman. But the means of executing the project are for Congress, and Congress alone, to determine once the public purpose has been established. See Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., supra; cf. Highland v. Russell Car Co., 279 U.S. 253. The public end may be as well or better served through an agency of private enterprise than through a department of government -- or so the Congress might conclude. We cannot say that public ownership is the sole method of promoting the public purposes of community redevelopment projects . . .
So no, Moses was wrong. And yes the Kelo Court was correctly following precedent. And yes, I think Robert Moses was the reason why the Dodgers left Brooklyn.