Somin on Blight Condemnations

Ilya Somin (George Mason) has posted Let There Be Blight: Blight Condemnations in New York after Goldstein and Kaur (Fordham Urban Law Journal) on SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

The New York Court of Appeals’ two recent blight condemnation decisions are the most widely publicized and controversial property rights rulings since the Supreme Court decided Kelo v. City of New London. In Kaur v. New York State Urban Development Corp., and Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corp., the Court of Appeals set new lows in allowing extremely dubious “blight” condemnations. This Article argues that the New York Court of Appeals erred badly, by allowing highly abusive blight condemnations and defining pretextual takings so narrowly as to essentially read the concept out of existence.

Steve Clowney