DC to Use Eminent Domain for Ballpark

[nebula]

The District will begin using eminent domain to acquire parcels of land at the site of the Washington Nationals' ballpark by the end of this month, after unsuccessful negotiations with nearly half of the landowners. . . .

And meanwhile, there is soe Native American bemoning,

"See, now they are doing it to their own people!"

[jamie]

Why do "we the people" allow our government to do as it pleases? I honestly don't know what to do...it needs to be an American effort to turn things around. It 'aint' happening.....meanwhile the government gets bigger and bigger and we get smaller and smaller.

[Work in Progress]

Actually our president has repeatedly failed to oppose use of eminent domain. In fact, while he was managing general partner of the Texas Rangers he conspired to use the government's power of eminent domain in order to seize property and build a new stadium.

M455, that is very interesting and I would like to hear more about it. Do you have any articles you can point me to? TIA.

Why do "we the people" allow our government to do as it pleases?

I so feel your frustration, Jamie, and ask the same question.

[nebula]

OK - you all made me look!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

Eminent domain (US), compulsory purchase, (England and Wales) or compulsory acquisition (Australia) in common law legal systems is the power of the state to appropriate private property for its own use without the owner's consent. The term eminent domain is used primarily in the United States, where the term was derived in the mid-19th Century from a legal treatise written by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1625. The term compulsory purchase, also originating in the mid-19th Century, is used primarily in England and Wales, and other jurisdictions that follow the principles of English law. Originally, the power of eminent domain was assumed to arise from natural law as an inherent power of the sovereign.

Governments most commonly use the power of eminent domain when the acquisition of real property is necessary for the completion of a public project such as a road, and the owner of the required property is unwilling to negotiate a price for its sale. In many jurisdictions the power of eminent domain is tempered with a right that just compensation be made for the appropriation. . . .

The power of eminent domain in English law derives from the form of real property. Many landowners assume that their property right is absolute under the law, but this is rarely the case. Instead, a county or other authority has created the property in fee simple, a concept that derives from feudal fiefs. The same authority may void (or condemn) the fee and seize the land, as when a landowner fails to pay property tax. According to William Blackstone,

"The reason of originally granting out this complicated kind of interest, so that the same man shall, with regard to the same land, be at one and the same time tenant in fee-simple and also tenant at the lord's will, seems to have arisen from the nature of villenage tenure. ... Though they were willing to enlarge the interest of their villeins, by granting them estates which might endure for their lives, or sometimes by descendible to their issue, yet did not care to manumit them entirely; and for that reason it seems to have been contrived, that a power of resumption at the will of the lord, should be annexed to these grants, whereby the tenants were still kept in a state of villenage, and no freehold at all was conveyed to them in their respective lands."

English-speaking countries that never had the feudal system have perpetuated the system of fee-simple property, including the power of eminent domain, for legal continuity. . . .