ABSTRACT
Fed by media and interest group hyperbole, the Supreme Court decision on the scope of state and local eminent domain powers in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) aroused a fear of big government kicking people out of their homes (Wolf 2008). As with policies such as affirmative action, people sense that government is stripping them of possessions and power and redistributing their hard earned benefits to others. What this frenzied public behavior ignores is that appellate court takings rulings about regulatory takings are but the visible tip of the iceberg of American land use and real property policy. In this chapter we posit that interest group ideological activism and appellate adjudication of governmental land use takings since the 1980s, such as the Kelo case, and subsequent changes in state eminent domain law have had limited influence on how political institutions commonly regulate American real property. Instead, political institutions seldom face neoliberal group litigation about the broad range of decisions that affect the use of private property.
