Page:United States Reports, Volume 545.djvu/528



Opinion of the Court deﬁnite and had been given “reasonable attention” during the planning process. Id., at 120–121, 843 A. 2d, at 574.

The three dissenting justices would have imposed a “heightened” standard of judicial review for takings justiﬁed by economic development. Although they agreed that the plan was intended to serve a valid public use, they would have found all the takings unconstitutional because the City had failed to adduce “clear and convincing evidence” that the economic beneﬁts of the plan would in fact come to pass. Id., at 144, 146, 843 A. 2d, at 587, 588 (Zarella, J., joined by Sullivan, C. J., and Katz, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

We granted certiorari to determine whether a city’s decision to take property for the purpose of economic development satisﬁes the “public use” requirement of the Fifth Amendment. (2004).

III

Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. On the one hand, it has long been accepted that the sovereign may not take the property of A for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party B, even though A is paid just compensation. On the other hand, it is equally clear that a State may transfer property from one private party to an other if future “use by the public” is the purpose of the taking; the condemnation of land for a railroad with common-carrier duties is a familiar example. Neither of these propositions, however, determines the disposition of this case.

As for the ﬁrst proposition, the City would no doubt be forbidden from taking petitioners’ land for the purpose of conferring a private beneﬁt on a particular private party. See Midkiff, (“A purely private taking could not withstand the scrutiny of the public use requirement; it would serve no legitimate purpose of government and would thus be void”); Missouri Paciﬁc R. Co. v. Nebraska,