Blurring language, taking homes.(Enterprising: business as an act of creation)

Owning a home, starting a business: It's the American Dream, which lured millions of immigrants, like Mr. and Mrs. Ciavaglia, to America. The Ciavaglias found their dream in New London, Connecticut, where they bought a home near the waterfront in 1901. Their daughter, Wilhelmina Dery, born in 1918, still lives there today, with her son Matt, his wife Sue, and their son.

But for the past four years, Wilhelmina Defy has been fighting to keep her home, and in July she took her fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. She may be forced to move not because of ill health or poor finances, but because the city and a private development corporation want to put up a hotel, office buildings, and upscale housing in the area where her home stands.

The corporation, backed by the city government, filed eminent domain actions in court to acquire 15 homes, including the Derys', claiming that the greater tax revenue the new development would bring justifies the move. In a dangerous legal precedent, the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed. How we reached this point is one of the greatest legal tragedies of the twentieth century.

"Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." With these few words, the Fifth Amendment places two significant limits on the government's right to take property. First, government can only take property for public use--for public roads and buildings, or for privately owned public utilities--and second, it must pay for the property.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned this understanding. The case involved the condemnation of a low-income area of southwest Washington, D.C. for redevelopment. One businessman objected that his store, which was in good shape, would simply be handed over to another private retail establishment, not a facility for public use. In response, the Supreme Court redefined public use to mean "public purpose." Clearing away slums is a public purpose, it said, and whatever happens to the property after the condemnation doesn't change that purpose.

Local and state legislatures eagerly read the Court's decision as an invitation to transfer other people's property to private developers. At first, they took property only in terrible neighborhoods, then in bad ones, then in decent ones, and now in areas that are positively ...