Introduction
Kelo v. City of New London is invoked across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a landmark eminent-domain case, but the excerpts never treat it as the subject of an episode. Bob Zadek introduces it in the context of guest Ilya Somin’s book The Grasping Hand, which Bob describes as being about “the infamous case of Kelo v. City of New London,” a case that “as we all know dealt with the issue of eminent domain” Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020). The case recurs as a topic tag in an episode on pandemic emergency powers Emperor Newsom’s New Clothes (2021) and again in a discussion of rent control and regulatory takings Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). In none of the three does a speaker set out what the case held.
The case as Bob Zadek frames it
Bob Zadek’s most extended treatment comes in the rent-control episode, where he uses Kelo to distinguish an outright taking from a regulatory one. He tells guest Trevor Burrus that “the Kelo case, although it was decided the wrong way,” and its aftermath, “taught us that you cannot use the Takings Clause to transfer property merely to transfer it from one private actor, the owner, to another private actor, a person—a private body who wants the property” Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). Bob then draws the analogy he wants the audience to carry: “that is kind of what rent control does.”
This is Bob’s framing, not his guest’s. Burrus does not dispute it, but the characterization of the decision as wrongly decided and the reading of its aftermath belong to Bob alone in the excerpt.
Susette Kelo and the house
The only concrete particulars about the case in the excerpts come from Burrus, who describes the traditional taking as a pure confiscation of property and offers Kelo as his example. He says the case involved Susette Kelo, that her house was a pink house, and that “everyone in that neighborhood had their houses taken and torn down” Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). He adds that her house was eventually moved.
Bob Zadek, in the same episode, refers to the aftermath of the case as involving a house in Connecticut, which he calls the little yellow house Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). The two speakers describe the house’s color differently, and the excerpts do not resolve the discrepancy.
The Takings Clause framework
Burrus supplies the constitutional backdrop against which Kelo sits, though he does not tie the holding to a specific amendment beyond quoting the language. He says the traditional idea of a taking is a power implied in the Fifth Amendment, quoting: “nor shall private property be taken except for public use and with just compensation” Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). He explains that private property can be taken if there is a public use and just compensation is given, and that the Framers were extremely concerned with how political actors could misuse their power.
Burrus places the Takings Clause in that rubric: without a requirement of just compensation, government has every incentive to misbehave, and the clause is the check. He contrasts the classic case—a house in the middle of a planned highway, park, or development—with the regulatory taking, where government imposes so many regulations that it destroys essentially all economic use of the property or lets others occupy it at below-market rent. He offers the hypothetical of a law letting anyone enter your home at any time, or requiring you to let someone live in your house, as an obvious taking. He notes that the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on regulatory takings is complex and that challenges alleging both regulatory and actual takings were working their way through the Second Circuit.
Across episodes
The case appears in three episodes spanning 2020 to 2021, but the excerpts show no development in how it is treated. In the earliest, Bob Zadek mentions it only to introduce Somin’s book Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020). In the second, it appears as a topic tag on an episode about emergency powers, with no discussion of the case in the excerpted text Emperor Newsom’s New Clothes (2021). In the third, Bob and Burrus use it as an analogy for rent control and regulatory takings Escaping the Statrix: Trevor Burrus’s Rent Control Red Pill (2021). No speaker revisits or revises an earlier characterization, and no guest advances a competing reading of the case.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the court that decided Kelo, the year of the decision, the amendment the case turned on, or what the case held. They do not name the city or state in which the events took place, the development project at issue, or the parties other than Susette Kelo. They do not describe the procedural path of the litigation or any dissenting or concurring opinions. The color of the house is given twice and differently, and the excerpts do not reconcile the two accounts.