Public good extends beyond economic development

The recent 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court misses a very important and ultimately fundamental element of the public good.

The high court's decision grants state governments the power of eminent domain to seize private property from one owner and transfer it to another so long as the move is deemed an economic benefit to the larger public.

Traditionally, eminent domain was reserved for cases that clearly and directly benefit the broader public, such as roads and bridges. This new ruling allows the exercise of eminent domain for much more indirect forms of public good.

In the future, if a private party or company demonstrates that they will hire more employees and generate more jobs in a community than the existing property owners, then the original owners are at the mercy of local governments.

This ruling threatens property owners without political or economic clout. In his dissent to the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas rightly argued that the poor and economically struggling land owners will suffer the greatest from this decision. Their inability to generate economic benefits will be the undoing of their private property ownership.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor harked back to two centuries of the court's long-standing tradition of limiting the power of eminent domain that would take property from one owner and give it to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote in her dissent. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public…"

O'Connor goes on to state that by defining economic development as "public use," the Court effectively washed away any distinction between public and private uses of property.

Without protecting private property ownership, the Court leaves all land owners on uncertain ground.

Churches, historical sites, family farms and other private holdings can be swept away, plowed under and transferred to those economic giants that, more and more, are coming to dominate our communities across the nation.

Ultimately the public good is served when generations feel connected to a place, to the land. Stewardship is always closely tied to ownership.

When that ownership is undermined, the bonds that tie communities together unravel.