Research On The Precondition Of Eminent Domain

Urban renewal has been a global problem. In order to clean urban blight and redevelop cities quickly, governments prefer to taking the renewal land, so as Chinese offices. But what constitutes'blight'that governments could use the power of eminent domain to clean is hard to define and bring a lot of social conflicts. Our Chinese also face this problem: effective laws and rules also don't detail'blight'and the State Council is now amending the rules related. This research attempts to analyze and summarize the definition of blight in urban renewal cases in the United Stats to benefit our legislative activities.American urban renewal is going on for around eighty years and the courts have formed some criteria in the judicial review in defining the blight that government could use power of eminent domain. At the first time, the'blight'in American urban renewal programs means the narrow and limited situation'slum', while some courts agree this definition and some didn't agree that municipalities had a granted of taking properties in this situation.The Federal Supreme Court of the United States has built the popular criteria of'blight'that could cause taking by the judgment of Berman v. Parker (1954). The Court employed the'injurious land use'to determine blight which means if the land conditions is detrimental to the public welfare, pubic health and so on, it is blight and government could taking them. The judges also illustrated that should attack the problem based on an area rather than on a structure-by structure, and could construe it liberally in order to reach the legislative objection. The following courts develop this criterion and the latest cases have pointed the limitations in defining'blight'as harmful land use.The urban decay also accompanies the fall of economics. Facing the pressure of economic redevelopment, some courts also adopt another criterion the'unbeneficial land use', which means if changing the land condition could create more advantages and can benefit the public interests. But this definition has been censured by judges and professors at the born time. Judgment of Kelo v. the city of New London, which adopted this second definition, made the whole society anger and trepidation, causing the legislatives modify rules related. The latest case directly opposes to examine'blight'within'unbeneficial'or not and gives its reasons.