All Sound, No Fury? The Impacts of State-Based Kelo Laws

Abstract

The 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut (545 U.S. 469 (2005)) was one of the Court’s most controversial decisions in the first decade of this century and without a doubt the most controversial in the areas of takings, land use, and property rights. That this is true can be verified by the breadth of media coverage about the case and the extent of state legislative action following the Court’s decision (see Sagalyn 2008 and Nadler et al. 2008 for discussions of media coverage; Jacobs and Bassett 2010a and 2010b and Castle Coalition 2007 for data on state legislative action). As of 2010, 43 states have passed so-called state-based Kelo laws.