Page:United States Reports, Volume 545.djvu/569



, dissenting among all the express provisions of the Bill of Rights. We would not defer to a legislature’s determination of the various circumstances that establish, for example, when a search of a home would be reasonable, see, e. g., Payton v. New York,, – (1980), or when a convicted double-murderer may be shackled during a sentencing proceeding without on-the-record ﬁndings, see Deck v. Missouri, (2005), or when state law creates a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause, see, e. g., Castle Rock v. Gonzales, post, –; Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, ,  (1972); Goldberg v. Kelly, , – (1970).

Still worse, it is backwards to adopt a searching standard of constitutional review for nontraditional property interests, such as welfare beneﬁts, see, e. g., Goldberg, supra, while deferring to the legislature’s determination as to what constitutes a public use when it exercises the power of eminent domain, and thereby invades individuals’ traditional rights in real property. The Court has elsewhere recognized “the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic,” Payton, supra,, when the issue is only whether the government may search a home. Yet today the Court tells us that we are not to “second-guess the City’s considered judgments,” ante,, when the issue is, instead, whether the government may take the inﬁnitely more intrusive step of tearing down petitioners’ homes. Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not. Once one accepts, as the Court at least nominally does, ante,, that the Public Use Clause is a limit on the eminent domain power of the Federal Government and the States, there is no justiﬁcation for the almost complete deference it grants to legislatures as to what satisﬁes it.