Should Boston use eminent domain to take private land on behalf of the Games?
That case, decided by a state court in 1998, focused on whether the state could condemn land on behalf of someone else.
The decision ended a five-year condemnation dispute that had raised the fundamental question of whether the government could condemn land on behalf of someone else.
There's a scheme for a 600 MW wind farm, dwarfing the present total British output of 450 MW, on land owned by the Stornoway Trust, which holds land on behalf of locals.
Mello believes the city government is using the Olympics to expropriate the land on behalf of favoured developers RJZ Cyrela, which was a major campaign donor to mayor Paes.
The RSPB has held the lease for this land on behalf of the local authority for over 40 years and incurs costs that would otherwise fall to the taxpayer.
But by a 5-4 majorithe the court decided to expand the meaning of "public use": the government can seize land on behalf of private developers, so long as there is a vague "public purpose", such as generating more tax revenues.This would appear to give the government the power to kick anyone out of his home to make way for someone richer.
A 34-year-old Communist government was voted out of power in the eastern state of West Bengal in May, 2011 after farmers in Singur, a town in the state's Hooghly district, staged a huge rally against the government's acquisition of land on behalf of Tata Motors.
In a statement, the Empire State Development Corporation, the agency that would take the land on behalf of Columbia, said the ruling "confirms that the project complies with New York State law in all respects and that the acquisition of the holdout properties is essential to realizing the vision for the Manhattanville campus as it was approved by the state".
They failed, of course, but most states have since passed laws curbing the power of local governments to grab land on behalf of private corporations.In the past year, in cases that were not decided unanimously, Mr Souter has voted 86% of the time with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court's liberal lioness.
