Twenty Years Too Long

Why Kelo must be overturned

Susette Kelo’s House, pre-Pfizer.

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Twenty years ago, George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office. A platform called YouTube arrived in app stores. George Lucas released his final Star Wars film. Hurricane Katrina wrought massive devastation across along the Gulf Coast. I cannot confirm these events myself, as I was born too late in the year for any of them. Still, it is fair to say most of the events of 2005 have faded into the history books and are of little concern to America in 2025.

The same cannot be said for the Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London (2005). Decided twenty years ago last Monday, Kelo haunts courtrooms to this day. Few other cases in modern memory have received such immediate and widespread backlash, rested upon such weak footing, and reached such a terrible conclusion. This decision took a constitutional amendment designed to protect property rights and twisted it into a rubber-stamp for force and tyranny. Ultimately, the project which led to the court case never went through, and the final result was the destruction of a local mother’s house in favor of feral cats. In short, Kelo is a textbook example of a backwards court case.

Most controversial Supreme Court decisions split scholars and commentators along