Eminent Domain

Abstract. The Amhara National Regional State similar to other regional states of the country has faced enormous economic and social problems. The question of housing and other real estate construction for high population pressure, the development and investment questions, poor public utility facilities and other public interests are some of the problems that need the intervention of the Regional government. In order to facilitate these needs of the society, the city municipalities have been using “expropriation ” as a meaningful and useful management tool. However, different compensation standards among government institutions, inadequate compensation standards for loss of land use rights, shortage of professional and qualified valuers, lack of reliable data and poor expropriation, valuation and compensation procedures are some of the problems that impede the implementation of expropriation, valuation and compensation in the region in general and in the two big cities of the region ...

The Indian state has used the colonial Land Acquisition Act (LAA 1894) for acquiring land even without people's consent in the name of 'public purpose' and on payment of compensation, until it got repealed by the new LARR 2013. The LAA 1894 is an expression of the concept of 'eminent domain' and draws its sustenance from the sovereignty of the state. The understanding of sovereignty and to what extent the sovereign power of the state can use the concept of 'eminent domain' in the context of land acquisition remains a contentious issue. This article examines the notion of sovereignty and use/misuse of the 'eminent domain' in the context of land acquisition in India. How does the inter-relationship between sovereignty and 'eminent domain' be understood according to the LAA 1894 and the LARR 2013 (new Land Act, 2013) has been discussed.

As the conflict over land assumes a central dynamic within the “growing Indian economy”, forcible acquisition, or the state’s power of eminent domain, is critical to various political and economic calculations. This paper discusses the doctrine of eminent domain in the context of dispossession and emergent land and resource conflicts in India. The origin of the doctrine in pre-constitutional colonial law, the legal mechanisms of land reform and acquisition laws through which it finds expression, and the recently proposed mechanisms for acquisition that expand its power and conflate public purpose with private capitalist interests are discussed. The paper examines the doctrine's dual nature that lends itself to redistributive justice and the dispossession of already marginalised citizenry. It then examines the vexatious concept of sovereignty animating the doctrine, discusses existing substantive limits to its power that need to be given primacy and the uneven jurisprudence around the doctrine. It argues for contextualised rights to land- and resource-use regimes, concluding with observations on the implications of the doctrine’s continuing and expanded scope.

The historical lines of the conflictual relationship , among the public management of the aqueducts, aimed to the control of the water concessions and the defense of the structures are examined, and the private practices who would’nt hesitate to damage the ducts to steal water. The rules on the imperial concessions and those on the strips of land on either side of the aqueducts are also analyzed.

Abstract: The Jordan Gate Towers of Amman, a luxury development, provides a case study of forms of planning practice undertaken as part of neoliberal processes in a city aspiring for regional relevance, well timed with the receipt of transnational capital investment. Deregulated planning practice in Amman became a vehicle for the inversion of the process of eminent domain and the subsequent appropriation of public property for private profit. The result is a compromise of public interest in favor of government collaboration with private developers, a conundrum examined in this paper through the case of the Jordan Gate Towers. Findings are based upon data and documents collected from the municipality, and interviews with city officials.

This Petition to the United States Supreme Court exposes the fraud of local governance corrupts the ideals upon which the United States was allegedly founded. Fundamental cornerstones of our democratic republic are the rights to property and due process. This Petition exposes the frailty of due process and property rights unless the Court considers their offense to be continuous violations such that statutes of limitation never apply.

Several US counties and local governments have recently considered a novel solution to the foreclosure crisis. They plan to use eminent domain to compel the owners of mortgage debt––and specifically of private-label mortgage-backed securities––to sell the debt to the government at a price reflecting the loan's market value. The government would then restructure the debt and resell it to new investors. The plans are striking because–– in contrast to both development-driven eminent domain and the federal subprime bank bailout––they would force investors to assume asset devaluation and increased long-term risk. Notably, the plans have emerged as an instance of financialization-focused politics in suburbs and suburban cities of color, specifically majority-black and-Latino/a suburbs. Local support for the plans, we argue, is rooted in the long-term disinvestment of these 'suburbs of exception', which became targets of subprime lending and eventually sites where the 'financial exception' has been localized. But these demographic shifts, fragmentation and fiscal pressures have at the same time created a suburban political terrain in which the plans have gained their strongest political support.

Expropriation of farmland by the state is an emerging global phenomenon,although in Indian Anthropology studies combining fieldwork and archivaldata on land grab by the government are rare. The combination of the anthropological fieldwork with data collected from the archives, like the departmental files and the assembly proceedings is a new research challenge for the anthropologists in India. This article is a modest attempt towards meeting the challenge by combining the various aspects of land expropriation with a specific case of peasant resistance in West Bengal in India. The data on the large-scale aspects on the problem were procured from the archives in the state legislative assembly and land acquisition departmental files while the micro-level data has been collected by anthropological fieldwork. The study revealed the wide difference between the policy makers and the people affected by governmental land expropriation.

The power of eminent domain to take property has been used historically for a recognized public use, such as schools, parks, and other government infrastructure. However, since the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, eminent domain has been used to take property from one private party and transfer to another private party to satisfy a much broader definition of public use such as economic development or increased taxes related to the new use of the property. This expanded power of eminent domain has been used in recent years for hydrofracturing activities. This article examines the constitutional issues of this expanded power of eminent domain and other associated constitutional issues ABSTRACT The power of eminent domain to take property has been used historically for a recognized public use, such as schools, parks, and other government infrastructure. However, since the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, eminent domain has been used to take property from one private party and transfer to another private party to satisfy a much broader definition of public use such as economic development or increased taxes related to the new use of the property. This expanded power of eminent domain has been used in recent years for hydrofracturing activities. This article examines the constitutional issues of this expanded power of eminent domain and other associated constitutional issues.

פסק הדין שהתקבל באחרונה בבית המשפט העליון בעניין סבח, העוסק בתוקפו המשפטי של החוק לתיקון פקודת האגודות השיתופיות (מס' 8), ממחיש את הכשל המתמשך המאפיין את התמודדותו של המשפט הישראלי עם קהילות מגורים. במובן זה פסק הדין אינו אלא חוליה נוספת בשרשרת ארוכה של פסיקה - הנמנעת מלהניח תשתית נורמטיבית סדורה להתמודדות עם קהילות מגורים בישראל.

מאמר זה מציע תשתית נורמטיבית כזו, אשר מבוססת על חובתה הפלורליסטית של המדינה הליברלית לאפשר קיומן של תפיסות טוב שונות במהותן, ומשמיעה קיומה של הבחנה בין קהילות מגורים שונות בהתאם למאפייניהן. המאמר מציע שלושה אדנים מרכזיים ליצירת הבחנה כאמור. ראשית, על המדינה לקיים בחינה מקדמית בדבר כשרותן החברתית של הקהילות השונות. בחינה זו מהווה תנאי הכרחי, אם כי לא מספיק, לתחולת חובתה הפלורליסטית של המדינה ביחס לקהילות. כיום דרישה זו מיושמת על ידי מדינות - ליברליות שונות, ובכלל זה ישראל, באמצעות מדיניות הבוחנת את הנורמות העומדות בבסיס תפיסת הטוב המשותפת לחברי הקהילה, ואת מידת התאמתן של נורמות אלה לערכים ליברליים. המאמר מבקש לאתגר מדיניות נוהגת זו, תוך הנחת אפשרות אחרת לבחינת כשרותן החברתית של קהילות מגורים כזו המשמיעה העתקה של מרכז הכובד מהמישור הערכי האתי אל המישור המבני. בהתאם לאפשרות זו, כשרותן החברתית של קהילות תוכר כל זמן שהן יאפשרו לחבריהן להשתייך בו בזמן לקהילות נוספות הפועלות בהתאם לנורמות שונות, וכן יימנעו מלהחצין את הנורמות הנוהגות בקהילה אל מחוץ לגבולותיה. תנאי זה הינו הכרחי, כאמור, אך אינו מספיק. לצורך הכרעה באשר לתחולת חובתה הפלורליסטית של המדינה ביחס לקהילות, על המדינה לשקול שני שיקולים נוספים. האחד עוסק בתפיסת הטוב המשותפת לחברי הקהילה וכן בתפקידו של שיתוף הפעולה ביניהם במימושה. לצורך זה המאמר מציע טיפולוגיה של תפקידי שיתוף פעולה במימושן של תפיסות טוב, שלפיה שיתוף פעולה עשוי להיות בעל תפקיד מכונן, מוסיף ערך או מסייע. השיקול האחר שעל המשפט לשקול הוא חוסנן הפוליטי והכלכלי של הקהילות. החוסן הפוליטי והכלכלי עשוי להשליך על היקף חובתה הפלורליסטית של המדינה הן בשל היותו סמן לקהילות המשתייכות לקבוצות המיעוט בחברה והן בשל התייחסותו לעצם הצורך בתמיכת המדינה במימושה של תפיסת טוב מסוימת.

המאמר ממחיש כיצד תשתית נורמטיבית זו עשויה לצאת מן הכוח אל הפועל, תוך עמידה על שלושה שלבי פעילות עיקריים שבהם קהילות מגורים מאתגרות את המשפט הישראלי: שלב הכניסה, שבו נבחנות שאלות הנוגעות בהקצאת מקרקעין ליישובים ובמנגנוני ההדרה המשמשים בתהליך הקבלה אליהם; משטרן הפנימי של הקהילות והיקף הביקורת השיפוטית הראוי על פרטיו של משטר זה; ושלב היציאה, שבו נדונים היקפה של זכות היחידים לצאת מהקהילה, היקף זכותה של קהילה להחליט על יציאה כפויה של אחד מחבריה, וכן הרחבת מנעד הסעדים שעל המדינה להציע לקהילות מגורים שנעקרו בשל נטילה שלטונית.



This article proposes a normative infrastructure concerning the legal treatment of residential communities in Israel. This normative infrastructure, based on the state's pluralistic obligation to protect the existence of multiple, diverse conceptions of good within a society, first requires the state to distinguish between diffferent residential communities according to their characteristics to determine how each should be treated. This article suggests three key elements for distinguishing communities in this way. First, the state should hold a preliminary examination of the social compatibilty of the community with other communities, and with society as a whole. Yet, while Israel, as well as other western jurisdictions, currently conducts such an examination by relying on communities’ acceptance and conformancewith liberal values, this article suggests shifting the focus of this examination from an ethical-normative level to a structural level. The article therefore proposes that the state should asses the social compatibility of communities based on their willingness to allow their members to affiliate with external communities, as well as their willingness to refrain from externilizing their norms to the rest of society. This examination is a necessary, though insufficient, component to satisafying the state's pluralistic obligation. To define the scope and scale of the state's pluralistic obligation toward residential communities, two additional considerations should be considered. First, the characteristics of the community's shared conceptions of the good should be examined alongside the role of cooperation in its ability to realize it. To that aim, this article proposes a typology of cooperation roles toward realization of communities’ shared conception of the good. Second, the community's political and economic strength should also be examined, as they might affect the scope and scale of the state's pluralistic obligation.
This article demonstrates how this proposed normative infrastructure may mature from theory to practice, while surviving the three main stages during which residential communities challenge Israeli law: (1) entrance stage, which involves questions related to the allocation of land and exclusion mechanisms; (2) communities' internal governance and the proper scope of judicial review of it; and (3) the exit stage, which concerns the right of individuals to leave the community, the extent of a community's right to deliberately expel one of its members, and the possibililty of community expulsion as a result of expropriation.

Over the course of American history, state courts have eliminated property rights in waterways through a quirk of public trust law: declaring the water in question to be “navigable” makes it public property, while declaring it “non-navigable” leaves the water subject to private control. The historical record is flooded with examples of these declarations by state courts. While some navigability rulings have protected public rights in waters against irrational private claims, others have abused this peculiarity to seize private property to placate irate, and even violent, interest groups.

The scope of this authority to make navigability doctrine — especially whether it gives state judges the ability to change the definition of “navigability” once declared — is unclear. Current law fails to curb abuses of navigability doctrine and pays scant attention to constitutionally protected property rights. These issues are particularly salient today: prompted by large-scale water diversions, droughts, and fears of water shortages, twenty-first century litigants wishing to prevent water privatization are increasingly seeking new judicial declarations of “navigable” waterways.

This Article provides an original history and analysis of state-law navigability doctrine and the limitations that should be implemented. First, it shows how this unusual common-law authority was created and how state courts exercised it in two moments in history when water rights became vitally important: the explosion of American development in the mid-nineteenth century and the rise of the environmental movement in the mid-twentieth century. Building on this history, this Article argues that to avoid abuses while permitting reasonable exercises of judicial power, navigability must be viewed through a national constitutional lens. The Takings Clause and Due Process Clause — independently or in combination — can provide guidelines that permit evolution while safeguarding individual rights.

The use of expropriation for the benefit of private subjects is a well-known practice in Comparative
Law, where it has raised a relevant constitutional debate. This study examines the terms in which such
debate has been developed in Germany, France and the United States. The main legal problems posed
by private takings are identified, and the solutions offered to them by the examined legal orders are
stressed. The results of the comparative analysis might be of interest for Spanish legal operators, both
at a positive and at a normative level.

Con ocasión de la dictación de la Ley Nº 20.791, el texto revisa la nueva regulación de las declaratorias de utilidad pública, así como la reposición de aquellas que caducaron conforme a las leyes Nº 19.939 y 20.331. Se señala que la planificación urbana exige estos mecanismos que la Constitución autoriza en virtud de la función social de la propiedad.

The State regulates property rights in exercising its police powers. One of the main objectives that the State seeks to achieve when exercising this power is environmental conservation. This paper discusses the importance of police power, the mechanisms it encompasses, its social and political bases, and finally, the regulation of intellectual property rights.

In this paper, we model and examine the effects of two salient features of the eminent domain law and its use. First, the compensation is less than 'full'. Second, the government is not a perfect agent of the society. Once these features are factored in, several claims in the existing literature do not hold. Our results question the 'fiscal-illusion' theory. We show that the full compensation ensures efficiency neither of the takings nor of the investment decisions. Moreover, things can get worse with tightening of the budget constraints. However, under-compensation combined with the provision of restitution delivers a better outcome-in terms of investment choices by the owners as well as the taking decisions and project choices by the government. Further, we show that fixed-compensation schemes generally are not efficient even if the government is benevolent, but under-compensation can still deliver outcome more efficient than the full compensation.

Taking over possession of private land by the Government through the use of the power of the eminent domain of the state for the economic development has become one of the most burning issues all over the world. While the international development agencies are largely in favour of participatory methods of development and governance, the national Governments are found to fight with their own citizens over the issue of land takings, most often, with archaic laws. India is the country where the acquisition of land by the Government still takes place by a more than hundred year old British colonial law, while its law makers have also created democratic and participatory forms of Local Self-Governments, which has no place in the colonial legislation. Ironically, the recent move of the Indian Government to enact a democratic law for the acquisition of land for development downplayed the Local Self-Government by disregarding one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution and the various international charters.

This article examines the time period around the United States Supreme Court Penn Central "takings" decision in the 1978, and includes the transcript of a speech by  New York State Court of Appeals Judge Charles D. Breitel explaining the rationale behind his Penn Central and his Fred French "takings" (TDR) decisions.

In this booklet the authors described in a lucid language the essential features of the colonial Land Acquisition Law with its strenghts and weaknesses.The booklet also provides a good guide for the activists who protests against unjust land grabs by the State.

This Article argues that individuals who live in highly cooperative common interest communities should— in certain instances— be entitled to additional compensation or other remedies when their property is taken through eminent domain. The exclusive takings remedy of monetary compensation equal to the fair market value of the property cannot always account for loss of communality. This Article offers guidelines for allocation of additional remedies (monetary and in-kind) that recognize such loss. This proposal is grounded in a pluralistic conception of property, which holds that the state should support individuals’ use of property as a social instrument to fulfill diverse values and beliefs. To that end, the state should balance several factors to determine whether a member of a community, or a community as a whole, should be entitled to remedies for communal loss: (1) the size and scope of the taking within the community; (2) the role, if any, of the community’s cooperation in its members’ realization of a shared conception of the good; (3) the community’s social legitimacy as determined primarily by its structural openness, that is, its members’ ability to simultaneously belong to other communities; and (4) the community’s ability to self-rehabilitate as determined by its political and economic strength. The state should also consider these factors in determining which of several types of remedies for communality loss would be most appropriate.

Eminent domain mediation is a process through which a neutral mediator assists a condemning authority—for example, a local government—and a landowner to reach a settlement agreement that each finds acceptable. Our experience with mediation as local government representatives tasked with acquiring land for a large water supply, lake-expansion project has led us to three conclusions:

1. Mediation can be effectively employed to help resolve difficult eminent domain disputes.

2. Mediation in eminent domain cases is universally available by agreement of the parties. Some jurisdictions—by statute or court rule—require mediation prior to scheduling eminent domain cases for trial, even in the absence of agreement of the parties. In jurisdictions in which mediation is not required, it is underused.

3. As a result, the local government and the landowner forfeit the significant benefits of this alternative.

Compensation for expropriation in most western jurisdictions aims to provide justice. Yet, while this quest for justice is inherent in expropriation laws, they nevertheless say little, if any, about the underlying conception of justice or how justice should be pursued. A closer examination of courts’ judgments, as well as scholarly discourse on the quest for justice in expropriations reveals a muddled dialogue in which divergent justifications pull one towards different normative and positive conclusions. Currently, expropriation doctrine purports to incorporate a sense of fair dealings with those who become victim to legal devices such as eminent domain. However, based on current case law, the reality of expropriation laws fails to reflect any true practice of justice.

This Article suggests a conceptual change in expropriation laws’ remedial scheme by embracing restorative justice as the underlying concept of what constitutes justice in expropriation law. By establishing expropriation law on a restorative conception of justice, a coherent framework will emerge that is circumstances attentive and will provide practical instruments to overcome some of current law’s most significant challenges. This opens a new venue for both expropriation law and restorative justice. Equally important, the Article provides a novel opportunity to consider restorative justice beyond the borders of criminal law.

This Article examines the significance of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in Gallenthin Realty Development, Inc. v. Paulsboro for redevelopment and property rights in New Jersey. It suggests that Gallenthin has resulted in the revival of meaningful judicial review of municipal redevelopment designations. Specifically, the Authors contend that Gallenthin confronted two pervasive problems concerning judicial review of redevelopment designations. First, since 1947, when New Jersey adopted a constitutional provision that specifically authorized the legislature to pass laws permitting the taking of property for redevelopment of “blighted areas,” courts have unduly acquiesced to legislative and municipal interpretations of “blight.” Gallenthin addressed this trend by reaffirming that the judiciary is responsible for ensuring that only “blighted areas” are subject to redevelopment. Second, although municipal fact-finding is entitled to deference if supported by substantial evidence, courts often deferred to municipal redevelopment designations based on an expert’s conclusory testimony that the property satisfied the statutory requirements for redevelopment. Gallenthin clarified that judicial deference is proper only if a municipality presents meaningful, quantitative evidence that directly correlates to the relevant statutory criteria. Indeed, post-Gallenthin judicial review provides property owners with great protections without frustrating legitimate redevelopment initiatives.

Expropriation simultaneously mobi- lizes state power and private property. When analyzed, expropriation brings about the chan- ce to explore the transformations of contempo- rary states in the context of globalization. An overview of world trends in the expropriation regimes shows that it is not a homogeneous pro- cess. Two hypotheses are proposed: that the most important change involves replacing the tension between public interest and private interest with the tension between local and global interest and that there is a link between the issues under debate and the contexts of discussion.

Nineteenth century features the supremacy of the
administrative state and the absolutized conception
of property, expressing liberalism. By then, lawyers
thought of expropriation as a clash between these two
values. However, in early twentieth century, as the
interventionist state expanded, the public power colludes
with private citizens, and the subjects profited from
expropriations. This challenged the liberal opposition
mentality and was followed by the incorporation of a
social conception of property. Throughout one century,
the interpretation of expropriation changed as the
underlying moral normativity on property changed,
prompted by economic modifications, even though the
legal texts remained mostly the same.

Before 1539, highway improvement in England and Wales (other than the clearance of illegal obstructions) was achieved only by crown licence following a satisfactory inquisition ad quod damnum. Magna Carta chapter 39 recorded that ‘that no free man is to be … disseised … except by … the law of the land’, but in the wake of other wide-ranging reforms in the 1530s, amid a growing sense of the common weal and desire for ‘improvement’, parliament overcame this obstacle to economic infrastructural development by adjustment of ‘the law of the land’, assuming prerogative power and delegating by statute the authority for the compulsory purchase of land. In this case it was for river navigation at Exeter, and not until 1662 was the power extended to roads. Compensation was always to be paid, but legislation rarely stipulated the explicit outright purchase of freehold. Parliament was willing to grant these powers to trustees or other public bodies, or indeed to private individuals, but only if it was considered that doing so served the public interest.

The enforcement of China’s new takings law has failed.  In the unbalanced tug-of-war between individual homeowners and deep pocketed developers, the government sided with the latter by changing zoning plans to fit commercial development, authorizing forced evictions, deploying judicial police to execute eviction orders, lowering compensation standards, instructing courts not to hear cases involving demolitions, blocking class actions, and more.  Many Chinese scholars argue that lackluster enforcement can be remedied by a well-drafted property code.  However, applying the New Institutional Economics’ (NIE) theory on institutions to the enforcement failure associated with the takings law draws attention to informal complaints, which may be the ultimate cause of failure in enforcing China’s takings law.

The rationales for local governments giving commercial development full support is invariably to reduce "transaction costs," increase local GDP, and improve local image.  The challenges facing the lawmakers in China are not only how to formulate property rules, but, more importantly, how to respond to and eventually alter the informal constraints that are hostile to weak property owners.

In order to reduce transaction costs in the development process and make property rules effective, the following changes to informal rules are necessary: (1) the government's discretion to alter zoning plans and authorize takings must be restrained; (2) independent appraisal must occur to ensure just compensation; and (3) the state should make efforts to promote judicial independence, which is essential for limiting the opportunities for government to abuse its powers.

Este texto aborda la concepción de la propiedad republicana-jeffersoniana y defiende que el principio político-filosófico que subyace a la misma es el del pacto fiduciario. Para ello se exponen las características de las relaciones fiduciarias diferenciándolas a su vez de las contractuales. Para ilustrar este tipo de relaciones, se abordan dos casos de estudio estrechamente relacionados en el republicanismo de Jefferson: las instituciones políticas y la propiedad. Se pretende así mostrar que su concepción republicana-fiduciaria es la que alimenta el principio de la “utilidad pública” de la propiedad privada presente todavía hoy en el constitucionalismo moderno y democrático. This paper addresses the Jeffersonian-republican conception of property and defends that the political-philosophical principle that underlies it is that of the fiduciary agreement. In order to do so, the characteristics of fiduciary relationships are exposed, differentiating them from the contractual ones. To il...

Este texto aborda la concepción de la propiedad republicana-jeffersoniana defendiendo que el principio político-filosófico que subyace a la misma es el del pacto fiduciario. Para ello se define primero la naturaleza de las relaciones fiduciarias que luego se ilustran de acuerdo a dos casos de estudio estrechamente vinculados en el republicanismo de Jefferson: el gobierno polí-tico y la propiedad. Se pretende así mostrar que su concepción republicana-fiduciaria es la que alimenta el principio de la "utilidad pública" de la propiedad privada presente todavía hoy en el constitucionalismo democrático. Palabras clave: propiedad, republicanismo, Jefferson, relación fiduciaria, principal, agente.

It is on the grounds of ‘eminent domain’ and in the context of the great urban transform- ations that the city of New York underwent through the twentieth century that so much cri- ticism is launched at urban actors such as Robert Moses. Blight often constituted the ground of legitimacy for the use of eminent domain. Blight is often condemned for its definitional ambiguity by both legal and urban historians. Yet if it is considered at the intersection of urban spatial reasoning’s experimentation with the size of the neighbourhood in relation to the housing project, and at the point where it collides with legal argument and jurispru- dential challenge around the notion of public benefit, it is possible to see an incredible productivity at work in the notion of blight. This paper argues that it is in fact the instrumen- tality of this definitional ambiguity that galvanises a broad and diverse dispute around housing. Rather than simply reflecting legal change, here the typological and diagrammatic spatial experimentation at work in the coming-into-form of the housing project can be seen iteratively to nudge transformation in legal and constitutional definition. This suggests a quite different kind of directed and specific material politics than that typically attributed to architecture’s disciplinary skill set.

Taking over possession of private land by the
Government through the use of power of the eminent domain
of the state for economic development has become one of the
most burning issues all over the world. While the international
development agencies are largely in favour of participatory
methods of development and governance, the national
Governments are found to fight with their own citizens over the
issue of land takings, most often, with archaic laws. India is the
country where the acquisition of land by the Government still
takes place by a more than hundred year old British colonial
law, while its law makers have also created democratic and
participatory forms of Local Self-Governments, which has no
place in the colonial legislation. Ironically, the recent move of
the Indian Government to enact a democratic law for the
acquisition of land for development downplayed the Local
Self-Government by disregarding one of the basic tenets of
the Indian Constitution and the various international charters.

Homeownership is in crisis. Millions of families are at risk of foreclosure as they are caught between declining housing values and rising interest payments on adjustable-rate mortgages. The primary concern for such families is not that they will become homeless - most families who lose their homes could afford to become renters - but rather that they will lose their status as homeowners. For families required to sell their property by the government's use of eminent domain, a similar issue arises, as the 'fair market value' of some homes (the standard measure of compensation) is generally not enough to allow the family to purchase another home. The harm of losing one's status as homeowner has afar-reaching impact at both the individual and collective levels. Property ownership ties one to the larger community in myriad ways. As compared to renters, homeowners - even those with the same income, education, and other socioeconomic characteristics - tend to be more civi...