That decision encouraged local governments to be creative in defining blight. Even neighborhoods that bore no resemblance to slums could be declared blighted if they were deemed "economically obsolete" or lacked amenities such as air conditioning and two-car garages.

 But in New London, the city is not even pretending Fort Trumbull was blighted. Instead, it says the promise of more jobs and tax revenue is enough to justify taking the land -- a rationale that has become increasingly popular since the Michigan Supreme Court endorsed it in 1981.

 The Institute for Justice, which represents the plaintiffs in Kelo, emphasizes the sweeping implications of the jobs-and-taxes argument, which the Michigan Supreme Court itself renounced last July, just a few months after the Connecticut Supreme Court used it to approve New London's land grab. "Any home can be condemned because few if any homes can generate as much tax revenue or as many jobs as an office building," I.J. noted in its petition for Supreme Court review. "Any small or medium-sized business can be condemned because the land will always produce more taxes as a larger business."

 New London's central planners are claiming the authority to take the property of anyone who is not, in their judgment, putting it to its best possible use -- i.e., the use most lucrative for the city. Validating that claim would invite politicians throughout the country to engage in the sort of arbitrary interference that rightly outrages Susette Kelo and her neighbors.

 "What galls me is the developer is taking my land so someone else can live here," Kelo says, noting plans for new housing units. "I'm not good enough to live here, yet someone else is."