Civil Liberties

In a new IPI publication, “On Private Sector Use of Eminent Domain,” Tom Giovanetti confronts a difficult topic and makes the limited government case for the right for property to be taken by the private sector when there is an unwilling seller and two key conditions are met under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

There is no reason for principled conservatives to oppose private sector use of eminent domain, so long as it is reserved for a public use and includes just compensation. In fact, private sector infrastructure should be preferred over taxpayer-funded, government infrastructure. Through private sector development of infrastructure, we can grow the economy without growing the government.

Tom Giovanetti, president IPI, said he was “forced to testify in cautious opposition to the legislation and it is not because we do not value property rights and it is not because we are not sympathetic to situations where this is an unwilling seller.” But he said the bill — being limited to only private, for-profit companies — seems to assume “that private sector use of eminent domain is somehow more subject to abuse than government use or that there is something that is actually inappropriate about private sector use of eminent domain.”

A government that simply takes things because it can, and then puts the burden of proof on citizens to get their property back, is a tyrannical government akin to the abuses Americans originally rebelled against. Asset forfeiture must be stopped.

A successful consumer data privacy law would be a federal law that addresses interstate issues.

Imposing carbon and gasoline taxes is not about ways to pay for needed government services. It’s about progressives trying to fund their climate change agenda.

In the constitutional design, there are three co-equal branches of government. Why, then, do we operate as if the judicial branch is supreme over the other two, and supreme over the states?

At the Institute for Policy Innovation’s Hatton W. Sumners Distinguished Lecture Series lunch on October 22, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick will address the crux of what’s at play regarding this high-stakes Supreme Court nomination.

The Innocence Project, which was founded in 1992, has demonstrated through DNA testing that there are numerous cases of men sent to jail because they were wrongly convicted of sexual assault.