The Kelo Case

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a long ago time when the Deputy Headmistress was a little girl....
My younger brother had something I wanted. He had gotten a package of looseleaf notebook paper. The cover sheet, the one with all the information about the size of the paper and the number of sheets in the package, had a photograph of a lion on it. I liked lions, and had collected several posters and pictures of them for my room. Since my brother had never shown an interest in lions and was only going to throw the picture away, I asked if I could have it.
He said no, and changed his mind about throwing it away. He taped it to the wall above his bed. For spite.
The more I begged and pleaded, the more he smiled and refused.

While he was away from his room, I sneaked in and took the picture. But I wasn't stealing. No. I left two new pieces of gum still in the wrapper taped to the wall in payment. Although I did not know the words, I understood fair market compensation, and surely, two new pieces of gum was a fair trade for a picture on a piece of paper that was intended to be thrown away anyway.

Oddly enough, neither my parents nor my brother agreed. I had to return the picture (I don't remember if I got the gum back), and my parents firmly made it clear to me that it didn't matter how much I paid for it, taking somebody else's property without the permission and free consent of the owner was simply theft. Stealing. And no, however flawed my young brother's character was, it did not alter the cold hard fact of ownership or obscure the fact that my own character was equally flawed. Maybe he was selfish and spiteful, but I was covetous and had a totally unjustified sense of entitlement to my brother's belongings (or the younger child just had a sense that something somebody else wanted must be worth more than he thought. And annoying his big sister was always fun). It did not matter what use I was going to make of it, or why I wanted it, or why the owner wished to keep it. The most important fact in all this childhood drama was simply that I wanted something that was not mine, and without the consent of the owner, nothing I could do would make that thing morally mine, and as long as my parents were my parents, nothing I could do would make it physically mine, either.

I wish the Supreme Court Justices had had parents like mine.
There's a lot to read about this case today. Let's start with the Good Captain, who gives us a lovely literary connection. Literary tie-ins make us very happy:

I recall the words of Mark Twain, who famously lost a copyright case involving a bootleg publication of one of his novels despite having the law clearly on his side. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the reference -- perhaps a CQ reader can locate it.) Upon his loss, he remarked that since the judge was so cavalier with Twain's property, Twain planned to offer the Judge's house up for sale -- and if he got a good enough offer, he might let the buyer take the contents as well.

Can anyone come up with a good use for Justice Stevens' house? A bowling alley or a Bennigans, anything that improves the tax base for his community? We could urge its confiscation under eminent domain and perhaps put in a Mark Twain Museum instead. Now that would be justice.

A reader supplied the Twain reference for him. You'll want to click on the post 'We're From the Government and We're Here to Move You' and read it all.

Updated to add links to other Common Room posts on this topic:
Source documents and historical background to property rights in this post
I briefly mentioned the Kelo case first in March.
The first reaction to the ruling here.