Supremes refuse to fix Kelo v. City of New London

[StateBoiler]

That was always a decision I felt the liberals on the Court got completely wrong. I feel like Justice O'Connor had this right. It's likely that the Court doesn't feel that this is the appropriate vehicle for reconsidering or tailoring back Kelo.

O'Connor's decision didn't make any sense at all. She recognized, correctly, that she would have to negotiate around her own (unanimous) opinion in Midkiff, and attempted to do so by saying that a taking would serve a public purpose if the taking itself alleviates a harm. That makes sense for cases like Berman, where the taking itself is a key component of the "urban renewal" plans, but it doesn't make sense in Midkiff. The harm in Midkiff was not that the land was blighted, but that it was owned by a small handful of people, and the taking in Midkiff only achieved its goal of stabilizing the land market once that land was given to other private parties (in Midkiff, residential leaseholders). That transfer to private parties is what O'Connor criticized in Kelo, but it's also exactly what she approved of in Midkiff! There's no way the framework she proposed in her Kelo opinion would produce the result that she (and eight other justices) viewed as relatively uncontroversial.

I imagine the Dimension of Intellectual Hell consists of intellectuals being read their previous public statements/judgments and then being required to rule on new cases without contradicting what they had done previously.