The article tries to position Columbia University as a big bad meanie, only catering to the rich and wealthy; while Columbia is a large institution with considerable resources, it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and while it does have many rich and well connected students, it also provides need-based scholarships so that anyone who gets in will be able to afford it regardless of their financial status. For many less well-off students, top tier and Ivy-league schools can be more affordable than lower tier or state schools, as there is much more need-based financial aid available.

Now, I disagree strongly with eminent domain being used to buy land and resell it to private for-profit developers. For an educational non-profit like Columbia, it's more of a grey zone. Using language like "seize" and implying that Columbia is a big rich bully doesn't really help to clarify this situation.

That is a seizure, full-stop. Imagine if Microsoft or Oracle decided to get into the bingo business and convinced the state of Illinois that the public would be best served by them running BCC rather than me. Fair market value for BCC is almost certainly south of $50k, based on sales of other websites, revenue multiples, and the like. I have no desire to sell BCC for anything close to that number: I have plans for the future, get psychic enjoyment out of it, etc etc. Tough to be me, though, if someone with deep pockets convinces the government to pretend they have constitutional authority to be an M&A team with guns.

"A house kinda like your house just sold for $500k, so here is $500k, now give me your keys" is just as unfair as "A business kinda like your business just sold for $50k, so here is $50k, now give me your passwords."

Second let me acknowledge that on the merits of this case divorced from the issues we're discussing here, I agree, Columbia shouldn't be the beneficiary of eminent domain.

But your logic doesn't hold. Just because there is a fair market value for an asset doesn't mean one party will be reasonable about selling it. It's not even likely that they'll be reasonable. The unreasonableness of a seller can indeed inflict economic harm on the overall market and on the public good. We recognize this, which is why we can build interstate highways without being held hostage by 2-bit real estate wildcatters.

A friend of mine is dealing with this right now in the real estate market; she owns several properties but rents her own property. Her landlord is being foreclosed on. She's made an offer above fair-market value for the house in a fashion that spares the owner from the (dreadful) cost of real estate agency. But the seller won't budge, believing that any offer from my friend must be the market floor value, else it wouldn't have been offered. And so my friend may have to move and the seller will end up receiving less money as a result.

This kind of micro-tragedy happens every other minute in a free market and I generally agree that we should suck it up and be happy for all the benefits the free market offers in return, but it's not fair to pretend there's no trade-off.

And, come on, it's totally unfair to compare a real estate transaction to the valuation of a small business.

Also, how does your friend's example make any sense? If the seller doesn't want to sell at a particular price, it's seller's choice.

Let me take another example. I bought my first car (a used 2001 Altima) in 2004 from some guy. As it was my first car, it has a special emotional value to me. In 2010, the value of the car is around 2000$ [I don't even drive it anymore]. Let's say tomorrow Nissan finds out that it's their 1 millionth car sold and they want it back to put it in Nissan Museum. They offer me the 2000$, the market value of the car. I refuse because the car more than 2000$ to me. They offer me 10,000$ and I still refuse. What if there is no price at which I am willing to sell the car? Should US Government deposit 2000$ in my bank account and give the car to Nissan by force?

[On a side note, I believe that their is price for everything. But seller should be able to decide the price, not buyer.]

Looking at the actual case: There were two businesses involved. Tuck It Away and a gas station owned by Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur. From their names, I can tell you that they are from state of 'Punjab'. Most likely they are immigrants to America and they would have worked hard to set up their gas station. Don't you think it's morally wrong to seize their business property just because another private organization can benefit? What if US Government forced you to hand over your company (which you built it from blood and sweat) to McAfee for 3x multiple of your revenue? Would that be okie to you?

Please do not get distracted by 'small business' example of Patrick. We are talking about 'private property' (either small business, real estate, car or what have you) and using (or rather abusing) eminent domain to seize that private property and giving it to another private organization.

Similarly, a (fictitious and nonsensical) eminent domain claim on a portfolio of treasury bills would be inherently fairer than a (fictitious and only slightly less nonsensical) eminent domain claim on Bingo Card Creator; the holder of the bills can easily calculate the fair value of his assets, and Patrick can't.

On a spectrum running:

<-- small business --------------------- treasuries -->

where is a gas station in Manhattan? It's not right next to Bingo Card Creator.

If NYC wanted to build a subway and needed to acquire the gas station, I would be completely on-board with the use of Eminent Domain but that's not what is happening here.

So now we're just haggling over the price.

Given that we are, it is inherently less fair for seize something for a which a real market value can't be determined.

When you evoke seizure of a software company, you're evoking the image in your mind of a government attempting to value your company. But the market famously doesn't know how to value small businesses. You know you're not getting anything resembling what it's worth.

When you seize a piece of commercial real estate in Manhattan, you can tell me all you want about how shady the NYC CRE market is, but there is a relatively liquid market for NYC CRE. It is less unfair to seize commercial real estate, corporate bonds, t-bills, or proven mineral deposits than it is to seize a business.

But. And please read this next sentence carefully. I agree with you about Columbia. I think this is an abuse of eminent domain.

(Why - oh - why is Thomas talking about this then? Because it's so - f'ing - much - more - interesting than yet another long rant about how the government is evil and I'm ashamed of my country and the weather in December is awful and God really needs to get on top of fixing that).

The term seizing implies the use of force, not necessarily the absence of compensation. When you have no choice but to sell, seizing is indeed the appropriate term.

I'm not educated in the law, so I cannot speak with authority to your assertion about the incorrect use of the term "public-domain". However, given that the term is in quotes and the the author is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, my guess is that the term has a historical context of which I am unaware.

Just because Columbia serves many "less well-off" students, or is a 501(c)(3) non-profit does not mean that Columbia is not the big bad meanie in this case. They are an enourmously powerful and influential institution.

Using this legal power to seize (And I use this term advisedly) a small business owners property makes them a bully in my book. There is probably a price at which he would sell willingly, Columbia almost certainly has the resources to pay that price, they are using the power of this law to twist his property out of his hand backed by the power of the state, this in order to further their "Vision". That is wrong.

This is a slippery slope that shouldn't be encouraged.

The appeal to personal feelings is also misguided. How would I feel if the State of Illinois decided that a new light rail project should run right through my house? Very, very bad! Burn the witches! But that's a textbook case of eminent domain, not an abuse; the only way to argue against it is to enter into a very unproductive argument about whether all eminent domain claims are abusive.

I disagree with Columbia in this case; the doctrine that says eminent domain comes into play simply because the benificiary can make the property more productive is unsettling. But it's still incumbent on us to make valid arguments.

You see it in many cities that want high-speed rail or simple public transit. These projects have become unaffordable. Why? Not because of the labor or materials cost, but because every piece of land needed for such a project will require a protracted legal battle spanning many years in order to squeeze money from the government and determine a "fair value" that in the end is usually very inflated.

I think the US could find itself in a very sorry situation if we remain paralyzed when it comes to building publicly beneficial infrastructure. Meanwhile China (who I am loathe to imitate) is building itself into the 21st century overnight, while we litigate for years (or decades) over the abandoned lot or corner gas-station that was in the way of something that provides much more value to the public.

If it's "fair market value," then why do they need to exercise eminent domain in order to force the sale? I don't see how this can ever be considered OK. If you want to buy someone's land and they won't sell it, you offer them more. You get creative and offer to help them relocate their business.

How do you determine "fair market value," anyways? The land and the building on it might be worth like $800,000 according to a property appraiser, but that completely ignores the value of the business. They're going to have to get new property elsewhere and build similar facilities; this will almost certainly cost more than their existing property is worth. So you're forcing a business to eat the cost of relocating, and they're losing revenue during the relocation, and this is fair how?

You can't make people do anything, you can only give them incentive to do what you'd like them to do. In a fair system, that incentive is a compensation package that works for both parties. It's not getting the government on your side to use force as the incentive.

And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans. I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout. Although the article wasn't the most well-written, I think it did a good job of conveying that idea.

In the U.S., this is specifically discussed in the fifth amendment to the Constitution: ...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This suggests that government may choose to take private property for public use so long as the compensation is "just". Note that "just" may not be the price that you want the government to pay, but it might instead be based on some other theory of justice, such as the current market value for similar property.

Now, not everything allowed for by the Constitution is morally desirable. (Recall the "3/5ths of a person" compromise.) But the U.S. government does have a defensible rationale for eminent domain; our ancestors agreed to the Constitution, and we haven't ever amended that part of it.

However, the Constitution also says "public use." I'm always very leery when there are private actors involved, not the least because there's a huge incentive to corrupt the government.

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Because sometimes individuals choose not to sell at the fair market value (e.g., not everyone sells their stock at the current stock price - in fact, some people choose to buy at that price. That's the definition of a fair market value.)

> And if the person is irrational and refuses to sell their land at any price, you freaking change your plans.

Sometimes this makes the plans dramatically more expensive and/or impossible. The canonical example is if a road needs to be built. It may be that there is _no_ viable route where all the existing property owners are willing to sell. This may either be because of personal attachments to the property or because they know that as the last holdout, they can demand a higher price.

In either case, "eminent domain" says the government can force the sale, paying a just compensation, in order to promote the public welfare.

Yes, this is imperfect (the owner may not consider it a fair price, or may not want to sell at any price). Yes, it is open to abuse. But yes, there are cases where it is needed, hence the inclusion in the Constitution, but with possibility of judicial and electoral review.

kb

[1] - obvious disclaimers - This is anecdotal evidence, and it happened in the 90s. Perhaps there was a tendency amongst lending institutions to inflate their appraisals so as to justify offering loans with higher profit margins. But I still think my point holds.

Because without something like eminent domain, someone with a relatively worthless piece of property can inflate the value of it by holding an entire project hostage in exchange for their piece of land. If I have land that I ordinarily couldn't sell for more than a hundred thousand, but I know that the government will be doing a multi-million dollar project, I might demand a half a million for my land, in order to make a nice profit at the taxpayer's expense.

Now, this case is in more of a grey zone than that. It's not at the taxpayers expense, but at the expense of a private, non-profit institution. I'm not sure how I feel about that; it's certainly less objectionable than using eminent domain for a for-profit developer, but still makes me uneasy.

Even more troubling, however, is the fact that if you check other sources on this story, such as Columbia's own daily paper http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/13/us-supreme-court... , you find that part of the reason the neighborhood has been determined "blighted", which is necessary for the justification that it's in the state's interest to buy the land and sell it to someone else, is that Columbia has already bought up many of the buildings in the area and left them abandoned. If that claim is true, then it certainly is outrageous to grant eminent domain on that basis; it means that any private developer who wants to gobble up land can just destroy the neighborhood, both driving down prices and allowing them to use eminent domain to buy up any remaining land.

The strident populist rhetoric in the New York Post article originally linked to is a bit misplaced. But given a bit more research, I'm inclined to agree on this particular case that there's something pretty rotten going on here.

> I don't understand why we should accept the idea that certain people have more rights to property ownership than others, for no other reason but money and clout.

The idea is that the city or state has an interest in cleaning up blighted neighborhoods; there are serious risks of crime, public health, land value, and the like with property is allowed to decay. When that really is the case, there is an argument for the government having the power to buy up whole blocks at a time in order to redevelop them (it is very difficult to impossible to fight blight a bit at a time, since no one wants to move in next to an abandoned building filled with squatters or drug dealers). However, it should not be the case that a private developer can cause blight buy buying and abandoning land, and then using that as an excuse to get the rest of the land through eminent domain.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

"fair market value" in this case does not mean "what the seller would take". It means "what the buyer thinks that the seller should take".

The seller will argue that a gas station isn't worth much, that a house in that area isn't worth much, etc. However, that land is clearly worth a lot more to the seller, so I'd argue that the "fair market value" is the value to the seller.

> anyone who gets in will be able to afford it regardless of their financial status.

"anyone who gets in" isn't "anyone" - it's folks selected by Columbia, which is a small fraction of "anyone".

For example, that "anyone" doesn't include significant numbers of folks from that neighborhood. You know, the folks who are being displaced....

Not that it really matters in the scope of the legal world, it's more of a philosophical argument, but its something thats constantly pissed me off about eminent domain, easements and property taxes.

It is misleading to suggest that Columbia is arranging to have private property seized simply for the benefit of those wealthy enough to attend Columbia.

I'm opposed to the underlying doctrine of eminent domain that suggests that land can be seized if the parties who it will be granted to can make better overall economic use of it, and thus I suppose "opposed" to this instance of eminent domain, but it's still important to have the facts straight.

I beg to differ.

> (it's basically just an offer to buy your land that you can't refuse).

That's more akin to seizing than not.

> The article sets up strawmen, like the politicians who denounce property rights, without ever quoting any politicians as actually denouncing property rights.

You can't be serious. What about the politicians that want higher taxes? That's a violation of property rights. What about the bailout? What about net neutrality? What about the "socialist" Bernie Sanders?

The problem with this particular case, as with the ones that I just mentioned, is that they are premised on the idea that it's OK to sacrifice somebody for the good of "society" (i.e., someone else). Frankly, human sacrifice is barbaric.

John Adams (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s15....)

Avram Noam Chomsky

See, that's a good thing. Stalin and Hitler tried seizing property "for the majority."

Regardless though, my core point in this is that the sanctity of private property within real estate isn't an unqualified good; as a very firmly limited resource with impacts on us all, there are surely times when it is right that the common good override the individual claim, with truly fair compensation for this violation.

Can you give examples? The only one I can think of that is potentially convincing is for building highways.

* Airports - Heathrow Airport had a proposed runway addition recently, as a very busy and overcrowded airport and piece of critical national infrastructure. There's only so many places one can build a runway in relation to the existing site and a new development elsewhere would need to be far, far larger to provide anything like the same level of service.

* Roads and railways. There are frequently only so many paths one can choose to avoid building a line that meanders so much as to both hugely increase its construction costs and vastly reduce its usable speed, rendering their construction largely pointless.

* Infrastructure such as power stations, waste disposal etc. Many if not most communities want to have them as far away as possible and can help facilitate this by blocking the sale of the land as well as introducing blocks on development permissions. We surely all agree that they need to be somewhere though, and clearly we can't all have them as far away from us as possible - there is sometimes a need to impose development on a location becase all need its services but none want to host it.

One of the core issues here is the difference between very crowded limited resources (such as Manhattan real estate) and the rather more open, available real estate situation across more of the USA. What might well be an unreasonable claim in an area where there was a significant amount of available land can surely be judged differently when there are such harsh constraints on availability, particularly when one owner is in a position to use their property to hold the larger entity to ransom because both parties know there's nowhere else it can go. That is surely the very definition of an unfair market.

* Airports: How much is it really going to help to build one more runway? What about when another runway is needed, and another after that? The best thing to do is to plan for the airport to take up an enormous amount of space beforehand, and probably, in this case, to build another airport. (NYC already has three, but I only know of two in London off the top of my head.)

* Roads and railways: I think this is the "most difficult" one to deal with. I think it helps to have a more accurate definition of property rights than what most people operate with, which is to say, it's only your property if you actually use it--otherwise nobody is impacting you if they use it, which is the whole point of property. For example, I don't think people should be allowed to "own" large, empty tracts of land. (This would be the common problem with building roads and railways in America.) And if you want to build new roads in a heavily urbanized area, I think that's just a bad idea... I mean, that's never really necessary, unless you want to increase the human density of that particular area (which it self is never really necessary). Also, there are options like building underground and building multi-story highways.

* Infrastructure: The examples you're giving (power plants, waste disposal) are just discrete "points" in the map that don't have to be physically in any one particular place, as long as they're in the general area. Surely someone in a large area will be willing to sell you a plot of land. (If not, just build the infrastructure further out.)

Your point about density of USA vs. UK is a good observation, though I don't think it really changes the principles.

A lot of times American libertarians (I'm not one, FYI) talk about limited government, and their opponents immediately say things like "What about roads? Roads only work if the government builds them, and has eminent domain." I personally don't agree with the latter point of view on roads - but, in general, I don't think it's really an argument worth having. There are more important things to argue about, such as defending property rights in principle. But for a principle to be valid, it has to always be valid. So when I argue about eminent domain, I do so to save property rights, not because I acutally think eminent domain is particularly important compared to so many bigger issues in our culture today.

As for building another airport - there's already (in rough descending order of size) Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton and London City also serving London, but none really has the critical mass to take over and all have separate constraints of their own, plus the road and rail infrastructure that currently links Heathrow with Central London would need duplicating on any of them. Actually, critial mass is the key issue here - Heathrow is a regular hub airport for a lot of routes. That simply wouldn't be an attractive proposition split over multiple sites.

Roads and Railways: We're currently seeing a lot of debate about the expansion of high-speed rail, very viable in Britain with our travel plans but much later adoption than the rest of Europe and the population density in Britain makes it very hard to find a route. The first line (to the Channel Tunnel) was bitterly opposed on every possible route and the subject of a lengthy fight, the second (initially London to Birmingham, then up the west coast) is faring little if any better. Look at a map; the line must be relatively straight if it's to work for high speed trains and must feed into existing terminal stations, but Britain is both crowded and far from flat. There are only so many routes....

Infrastructure - I suppose that is more of a general 'Not In My Back Yard' problem, a depressingly familiar attitude. Heathrow was cited beforel it's not long opened a fifth terminal (for two runways remember) and the planning enquiry for that had so much resistance that it took four years to complete. For a fifth terminal at an existing large airport that's 64 years old. Power stations (fossil fuel and nuclear requiring transport infrastructure for fuel supply and maintenance, renewable requiring large amounts of land), waste incinerators or dumps, high speed rail that by definition must go through areas it cannot serve or the station frequency would be too high - we all want their amenity in general, but somewhere else. The population density of England is too high to put everything 'somewhere else' though - we sometimes need powers to force development to ensure it happens anywhere.

Or for a fictional example. In a UK radio soap opera, there was recently a story where two rival property developers clashed. One set up a large scheme, obtained the sites, set up all the details - then discovered at the last minute that there was a previously unknown problem with the access to the site from the area they had been planning to use. Enter developer two who had bought a tiny parcel of land when he was what was starting, and which was now the only viable means of access to the site. Valueless land otherwise, yet he held the entire development otherwise to ransom. Now, in this sort of case compulsory purchase isn't available in the UK (and rightly so), yet he was in a position to ask for a vastly inflated sum because he became the keys to the whole project. Compulsory purchase stops that from being possible and requires all parties concerned to be fair with each other.

I wholeheartedly agree that forced sale should be a last resort and to be avoided wherever possible. If something is considered a vital piece of infrastructure though and there simply aren't available alternatives, I would rather have the option available to force a reasonable, fair and transparent deal through than to allow development to be held to ransom or flat vetoed by a single individual.

The court's decision in this case does mean that force has been used against the property's owners.

And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.

We legally compel all sorts of actions. We obey these compulsions (in theory at least) because we know that if we don't we risk being forcibly compelled to comply or forcibly restricted in other ways, such as fines or imprisonment. I applaud your motives but rationally there is an underlying, implied force behind a great many actions between us.

- The area in question is blighted. This isn't an old area like SoHo is old. Think of the worst images of New York City from forty years ago. Think of the Charles Bronson vigilante movies from the 1970's.

- If you've been to a top school in the past few years you know that they've been involved in an arms race of building facilities. If you want to be a top university in this country you need to be able to attract the top faculty and students. You need the infrastructure. In NYC this is almost impossible given the cost of real estate and overcrowding. Columbia isn't doing this as a capricious act. It needs to expand if it is going to survive as a premier university. This isn't being done to build luxury dorms for rich undergrads. This is being done to provide new research and teaching facilities so that a two hundred fifty year old university can continue into the future.

- The businesses in question are the last in the area. Over the last ten years or so there has been a lot of back and forth between the university and its surrounding neighborhood. Some of it Columbia should be very embarrassed (perhaps even ashamed about) but after much squabbling the businesses in the article are the last holdouts. There is a lot being given back to the community by Columbia to make up for taking a larger part of the neighborhood. This includes cash payments, new schools, new community centers and housing for those displaced.

- The businesses in question were offered payment much in excess of what their properties are worth. The warehouse company was also offered a swap for real estate in a much more desirable location in the area. It agreed to the swap and then reneged on the deal.

The situation sucks but it's the world we live in. It's almost impossible for an institution to grow in the center of a major urban area. At the same time those institutions must grow if the urban area is to remain vibrant for its citizens going into the future. All things considered I think Columbia has been getting a raw deal in the condemnations like the one in the NY Post. It's easy pickings for the paper to rile up it's readers but in the end it only hurts the city as a whole.

I'm not part of Columbia but my wife is an alumni and my daughter is a current student there.

How is it in the public's interest that Columbia be a premier university? If their top faculty leaves to teach elsewhere, they'll still be teaching. Students will receive their educations. Columbia does worse, other schools do better. No net loss.

So why am I not surprised when the courts do exactly that?