Federalist Society teleforum on pipeline takings

Pipeline prepared for use in the controversial Keystone XL project (2012).

The Federalist Society has posted an audio of today's teleforum on the growing controversy over the use of eminent domain to seize property for pipelines. The speakers are Professor Alexandra Klass of the University of Minnesota Law School (probably the nation's leading expert on the use of eminent domain for energy infrastructure), and myself. As we discuss, opposition to pipeline condemnations has come from a cross-ideological alliance of liberal environmentalists and right of center property rights advocates. The coalition is similar, in some ways, to the cross-ideological reaction against the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London, which upheld the condemnation of property for transfer to private interests in order to promote "economic development."

I previously wrote about the political and legal struggle over pipeline condemnations in this post, and in Chapter 8 of my recent book about the Kelo case and its aftermath.