The Decline of the Constitutional Government in the United States

A "Declaration of True Meaning" Procedure Could Help the People to Restore It

Roland Adickes

• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781662451447
• eBook ISBN: 9781662451454
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the American people conscientiously amended the Constitution in accordance with Article V. Beginning with the New Deal, majorities in Congress, in effect, amended the Constitution by mere acts of Congress, which were upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Court, acting on its own, also, in effect, amended the Constitution in several cases over the years.

This change deprived the people in the less populous States of their right to participate in the shaping of amendments.

The Declaration of True Meaning procedure proposed in this book would be a small step toward restoring the Founders' plan of self-government.

CHAPTER 9

URBAN RENEWAL AND HOUSING

While the Constitution gives to Congress only the enumerated, limited powers to legislate with respect to the Union and the States, which powers are expressly listed in Article I, Section 8 (and a few elsewhere in the Constitution),274 Clause 16 of Section 8 Article I grants to Congress the power to exercise exclusive Legislation over the District of Columbia. Congress, thus, has a power of legislation with respect to the District, equal to the power of a State legislature within its State, known as the whole power of legislation. But this broad power is still subject to the limits spelled out in the United States Constitution.

Pursuant to this power, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945.275 This act purported to give a redevelopment commission the power to take private property, with just compensation to the owners, to be sold to other private persons who would rebuild it in accord with the commission’s redevelopment plan.

The lower federal court (a statutory three judge court) in an opinion by Circuit Judge Prettyman, considered this power to be unconstitutional, if applied to

an urban area which does not breed disease or crime, is not a slum. Its fault is that it fails to meet what is called modern standards. Let us suppose that it is backward, stagnant, not properly laid out, economically Eighteenth Century—anything except detrimental to health, safety or morals. Suppose its owners and occupants like it that way…suppose these people own these homes and can afford none more modern. The poor are entitled to own what they can afford.276

The court discussed the problem in depth:

It is said that the established meaning of eminent domain includes measures for the “general welfare” and that new social doctrines have so enlarged the concept of public welfare as to include all measures designed for the public benefit. The difficulty lies…in the practicality that some person…must determine…what is the public benefit. Therein lies the insuperable obstacle, in the American view. There is no more subtle means of transforming the basic concepts of our government, of shifting from the preeminence of individual rights to the preeminence of government wishes, than is afforded by redefinition of “general welfare,” as that term is used to define the Government’s power of seizure. If it were to be determined that it includes whatever a commission…determines to be in the interest of “sound development,” without definition of “sound development,” the ascendence of government over the individual right to property will be complete… We are of opinion that the Congress…has no power to authorize the seizure…of property for the sole purpose of redeveloping the area according to its…judgement of what a well-developed, well-balanced neighborhood would be. (emphasis added)277

Here, the lower court adhered to our Constitution which in Amendment V implicitly protects an individual’s right of property against seizure by the government, except for a PUBLIC USE:

…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.278

Remember that the Constitution and the Amendments, in large part, are summaries of the absolute rights of Englishmen described in Blackstone’s Commentaries. The Founders lived by the laws described in the Commentaries, i.e., the common law of Engl and, which was the law in all colonies and remained, by their choice, their law after they became States. They used concepts derived from the common law in drafting the Constitution of 1787.

Here is what Blackstone had to say about private property, the third of the absolute rights of every Englishman he describes in the Commentaries:

So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; n...

Table of contents

• THE “DECLARATION OF TRUE MEANING” PROCEDURE
• THE GREATEST ERROR, AND THE TWO MOST RECENT QUESTIONABLE DECISIONS, OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
• THE TAXING AND SPENDING POWER
• THE POWER TO REGULATE COMMERCE
• DOES THE CONSTITUTION GIVE TO THE SUPREME COURT A LAWFUL POWER TO DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE IN THE SEVERAL STATES OF THE POWER, RESERVED BY THE TENTH AMENDMENT, TO LEGISLATE REGARDING THE RIGHT TO LIFE OF UNBORN CHILDREN?
• THE CLEAN WATER ACT
• THE CLEAN AIR ACT
• EDUCATION
• URBAN RENEWAL AND HOUSING