Scholarship Repository University of Minnesota Law School Articles Faculty Scholarship 2013 Takings and Transmission Alexandra B. Klass University of Minnesota Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Alexandra B. Klass, Takings and Transmission, 91 N.C. L. REV. 1079 (2013), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/18. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in the Faculty Scholarship collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. TAKINGS AND TRANSMISSION* ALEXANDRA B. KLASS** Ever since the Supreme Court's controversial 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, courts, state legislatures, and the public have scrutinized eminent domain actions like never before. Such scrutiny has focused, for the most part,on the now- controversial "economic development" or "public purpose" takings involved in Kelo. By contrast, until recently, there has been little change in law or public opinion with regard to takings involving publicly owned projects such as schools, post offices, and other government buildings, or "use by the public" takings that condemn land for railroad lines, electric transmission lines, or other infrastructure projects. However, recent changes in electricity markets and the development of the country's electric transmission system have raised new questions about the validity of "use by the public" takings in the context of electric transmission lines. With some transmission lines now being built by private "merchant" companies rather than by publicly regulated utilities, and with the push to build more interstate transmission lines to transport renewable energy to meet state renewable portfolio standards,what was once a classic public use is now subject to new statutory and constitutional challenges.