DETROIT - It has been almost a generation since the Poletown neighborhood here was demolished to make room for a General Motors Cadillac plant, and in the sprawling factory's vast parking lots and neatly landscaped campus there are no signs of the 1,300 houses, 140 businesses and six churches that were razed or the pitched battle to save one of the city's oldest ethnic enclaves.
The memory of Detroit's Poletown has cropped up instead in communities across the country over the past 20 years, as dozens of municipalities and courts in at least 10 states have relied on a landmark ruling from the Michigan Supreme Court in that fight to justify using the powers of eminent domain for economic revitalization.
But as the U.S. Supreme Court considers this week a case from New London, Conn., where property owners are challenging the taking of their homes for private development, the history of the high-profile Poletown case has been rewritten.
In a rare reversal of precedent, the Michigan court overturned last summer its two-decade-old ruling that allowed government to seize land for private development. A unanimous court wrote: "We must overrule Poletown in order to vindicate our Constitution, protect the people's property rights, and preserve the legitimacy of the judicial branch as the expositor - not creator - of fundamental law."
The decision has no binding effect outside Michigan, and it cannot undo the changes to Poletown. But it was a major victory for property rights advocates nationwide who argue that local governments increasingly have abused their eminent domain powers by seizing small businesses and homes in the name of economic development, jobs and tax dollars.
"Certainly, it tells the U.S. Supreme Court that other courts are worried about what's going on," said Dana Berliner, a senior attorney with the Washington-based Institute for Justice, which is representing the homeowners in New London. "It shows that state courts have begun to realize that things have gotten completely out of hand."
`Public use'
The U.S. and most state constitutions allow government to condemn property for "public use" as long as the landowner is compensated. Historically, eminent domain was used primarily for obvious public projects that required large, connected tracts - building highways and railroads, or schools and parks.
