Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [135]
July 19, 2004
Within hours of filing its petition with the Supreme Court, the Institute for Justice hosted a luncheon at its office for the Supreme Court reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and other influential national publications. Chip Mellor wanted the institute to leave no stone unturned in trying to persuade the Court to hear the homeowners’ case. One important ingredient was getting the message out that the case had national implications. Over lunch, Bullock and Berliner briefed the nation’s top court reporters on the Kelo case.
A couple of days later, Bullock met with an editor from the Economist to discuss the case. Then he met with Pete Williams, the legal correspondent for the NBC Nightly News. But the institute figured the person it needed to get to most was George Will, one of the most influential writers in the country. His syndicated column appeared in the Washington Post and in more than four hundred other newspapers across the country in any given week. And the Kelo case presented just the kinds of issues he liked to tackle—a cutting-edge legal dispute with far-reaching legal and political ramifications, not to mention a compelling set of characters.
Immediately after the institute filed its petition with the Supreme Court, it sent a copy to Will, along with a cover letter encouraging him to consider writing about the case. The institute was no stranger to Will. He had spoken at an event commemorating the institute’s ten-year anniversary and had championed the institute’s cases in his columns on previous occasions.
Shortly after receiving the institute’s package, Will agreed to meet Scott Bullock and John Kramer at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. Over breakfast they discussed the case. Well-versed in the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment, Will asked detailed questions about the Kelo case and its broader implications. Bullock consciously tried not to go too far in his pitch. Will wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to be told what he should be writing about. He ended the breakfast meeting cordially and made no promises.
As Wes Horton put the finishing touches on his opposition brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the City of New London, he felt quite confident that strong legal precedent favored the city. He explained his thinking to Londregan.
A few years earlier Horton had petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of the Bugryn family in Bristol, Connecticut, Horton had previously told Londregan. In the Bugryn case, Horton figured he had had a compelling argument for a hearing: The city of Bristol had used eminent domain to condemn Bugryn’s private land purely to satisfy a private developer. The Connecticut Supreme Court had ruled this was okay. And Horton couldn’t persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to even consider the case, which enabled the Bugryn ruling to stand.
“That puts Ms. Kelo in a very difficult position,” said Horton, insisting that the facts in the New London case weren’t as egregious as the ones in Bugryn had been. “Kelo can’t make the argument that the city sold out to the developer,” Horton said.
But what about the institute’s argument that the city had essentially sold out to Pfizer? Horton wasn’t worried about that argument either. “The Pfizer argument is weak for Kelo,” he said. “It’s promising for the city because Pfizer was there first. Pfizer came in and did all this work without knowing whether the city would do anything. And they weren’t saying they were going to leave town if the city didn’t take this land.”
Horton had another reason to be confident. In his legal research he didn’t see the state Supreme Courts disagreeing in their opinions about the public-use clause in the Fifth Amendment. And when there was no conflict among the lower courts, the U.S. Supreme Court was less likely to weigh in.
Londregan had to