Berman v. Parker

BERMAN ET AL., EXECUTORS, v. PARKER ET AL.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

No. 22. Argued October 19, 1954 — Decided November 22, 1954.

117 F. Supp. 705, modified and affirmed.

Opinion of the Court by Mr. Justice Douglas. The decision was unanimous; no separate opinion was filed.

James C. Toomey and Joseph H. Schneider argued the cause for appellants. With them on the brief was Albert Ginsberg. Solicitor General Sobeloff argued the cause for appellees. Assistant Attorney General Morton, Oscar H. Davis, Roger P. Marquis, George F. Riseling and William S. Cheatham were with him on a brief for the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency and the National Capital Planning Commission, appellees. Vernon E. West, Chester H. Gray, Milton D. Korman, Harry L. Walker and J. Hampton Baumgartner, Jr. filed a brief for Renah F. Camalier and Louis W. Prentiss, Commissioners of the District of Columbia, appellees.

The report occupies pages 26 through 36 of volume 348 of the United States Reports. The syllabus occupies pages 26 and 27; the opinion of the Court runs from page 28 to page 36, where the judgment of the District Court, as modified by the opinion, is affirmed.

[348 U.S. 26] “The District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945 is constitutional, as applied to the taking of appellants' building and land (used solely for commercial purposes) under the power of eminent domain, pursuant to a comprehensive plan prepared by an administrative agency for the redevelopment of a large area of the District of Columbia so as to eliminate and prevent slum and substandard housing conditions — even though such property may later be sold or leased to other private interests subject to conditions designed to accomplish these purposes. Pp. 28-36.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(a) The power of Congress over the District of Columbia includes all the legislative powers which a state may exercise over its affairs. Pp. 31-32.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(b) Subject to specific constitutional limitations, the legislature, not the judiciary, is the main guardian of the public needs to be served by social legislation enacted in the exercise of the police power; and this principle admits of no exception merely because the power of eminent domain is involved. P. 32.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(c) This Court does not sit to determine whether or not a particular housing project is desirable. P. 33.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(d) If Congress decides that the Nation's Capital shall be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way. P. 33.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(e) Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is clear. P. 33.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(f) Once the public purpose has been established, the means of executing the project are for Congress and Congress alone to determine. P. 33.”

[348 U.S. 26] “(g) This Court cannot say that public ownership is the sole method of promoting the public purposes of a community redevelopment project; and it is not beyond the power of Congress to utilize an agency of private enterprise for this purpose or to authorize the taking of private property and its resale or lease to the same or other private parties as part of such a project. P. 34.”

[348 U.S. 27] “(h) It is not beyond the power of Congress or its authorized agencies to attack the problem of the blighted parts of the community on an area rather than on a structure-by-structure basis. Redevelopment of an entire area under a balanced integrated plan so as to include not only new homes but also schools, churches, parks, streets, and shopping centers is plainly relevant to the maintenance of the desired housing standards and therefore within congressional power. Pp. 34-35.”

[348 U.S. 27] “(i) The standards contained in the Act are sufficiently definite to sustain the delegation of authority to administrative agencies to execute the plan to eliminate not only slums but also the blighted areas that tend to produce slums. P. 35.”

[348 U.S. 27] “(j) Once the public purpose is established, the amount and character of the land to be taken for the project and the need for a particular tract to complete the integrated plan rests in the discretion of the legislature. Pp. 35-36.”

[348 U.S. 27] “(k) If the Redevelopment Agency considers it necessary in carrying out a redevelopment project to take full title to the land, as distinguished from the objectionable buildings located thereon, it may do so. P. 36.”

[348 U.S. 27] “(l) The rights of these property owners are satisfied when they receive the just compensation which the Fifth Amendment exacts as the price of the taking. P. 36.”

[348 U.S. 31] “Appellants own property in Area B at 712 Fourth Street, S.W. It is not used as a dwelling or place of habitation. A department store is located on it. Appellants object to the appropriation of this property for the purposes of the project. They claim that their property may not be taken constitutionally for this project. It is commercial, not residential property; it is not slum housing; it will be put into the project under the management of a private, not a public, agency and redeveloped for private, not public, use.”

[348 U.S. 31] “To take for the purpose of ridding the area of slums is one thing; it is quite another, the argument goes, to take a man's property merely to develop a better balanced, more attractive community.”

[348 U.S. 31] “The power of Congress over the District of Columbia includes all the legislative powers which a state may exercise over its affairs.”

[348 U.S. 32] “We deal, in other words, with what traditionally has been known as the police power. An attempt to define its reach or trace its outer limits is fruitless, for each case must turn on its own facts. The definition is essentially the product of legislative determinations addressed to the purposes of government, purposes neither abstractly nor historically capable of complete definition. Subject to specific constitutional limitations, when the legislature has spoken, the public interest has been declared in terms well-nigh conclusive. In such cases the legislature, not the judiciary, is the main guardian of the public needs to be served by social legislation . . . . This principle admits of no exception merely because the power of eminent domain is involved. The role of the judiciary in determining whether that power is being exercised for a public purpose is an extremely narrow one.”

[348 U.S. 32] “Public safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order — these are some of the more conspicuous examples of the traditional application of the police power to municipal affairs. Yet they merely illustrate the scope of the power and do not delimit it. . . . Miserable and disreputable housing conditions may do more than spread disease and crime and immorality. They may also suffocate the spirit by reducing the people who live there to the status of cattle. They may indeed make living an almost insufferable burden. They may also be an ugly sore, a blight on the community which robs it of charm, [348 U.S. 33] which makes it a place from which men turn. The misery of housing may despoil a community as an open sewer may ruin a river.”

[348 U.S. 33] “We do not sit to determine whether a particular housing project is or is not desirable. The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive. . . . The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled. In the present case, the Congress and its authorized agencies have made determinations that take into account a wide variety of values. It is not for us to reappraise them. If those who govern the District of Columbia decide that the Nation's Capital should be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way.”

[348 U.S. 33] “Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is clear. For the power of eminent domain is merely the means to the end. . . . Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the means by which it will be attained is also for Congress to determine. Here one of the means chosen is the use of private enterprise for redevelopment of the area. Appellants argue that this makes the project a taking from one businessman for the benefit of another businessman. But the means of executing the project are for Congress and Congress alone to determine, once the public purpose has been established.”

[348 U.S. 34] “The public end may be as well or better served through an agency of private enterprise than through a department of government — or so the Congress might conclude. We cannot say that public ownership is the sole method of promoting the public purposes of community redevelopment projects.”

[348 U.S. 34] “In the present case, Congress and its authorized agencies attack the problem of the blighted parts of the community on an area rather than on a structure-by-structure basis. That, too, is opposed by appellants. They maintain that since their building does not imperil health or safety nor contribute to the making of a slum or a blighted area, it cannot be swept into a redevelopment plan by the mere dictum of the Planning Commission or the Commissioners. . . . The experts concluded that if the community were to be healthy, if it were not to revert again to a blighted or slum area, as though possessed of a congenital disease, the area must be planned as a whole.”

[348 U.S. 35] “Such diversification in future use is plainly relevant to the maintenance of the desired housing standards and therefore within congressional power.”

[348 U.S. 35] “Property may of course be taken for this redevelopment which, standing by itself, is innocuous and unoffending. But we have said enough to indicate that it is the need of the area as a whole which Congress and its agencies are evaluating. If owner after owner were permitted to resist these redevelopment programs on the ground that his particular property was not being used against the public interest, integrated plans for redevelopment would suffer greatly. The argument pressed on us is, indeed, a plea to substitute the landowner's standard of the public need for the standard prescribed by Congress.”

[348 U.S. 35] “It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area. Once the question of the public purpose has been decided, the amount and character of land to be taken for the project and the need for a [348 U.S. 36] particular tract to complete the integrated plan rests in the discretion of the legislative branch.”

[348 U.S. 36] “If the Agency considers it necessary in carrying out the redevelopment project to take full title to the real property involved, it may do so. It is not for the courts to determine whether it is necessary for successful consummation of the project that unsafe, unsightly, or insanitary buildings alone be taken or whether title to the land be included, any more than it is the function of the courts to sort and choose among the various parcels selected for condemnation.”

[348 U.S. 36] “The rights of these property owners are satisfied when they receive that just compensation which the Fifth Amendment exacts as the price of the taking.”

[348 U.S. 36] “The judgment of the District Court, as modified by this opinion, is Affirmed.”

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus and reproduces the Court's own text in extended verbatim passages arranged in the Court's own sequence of analysis, each bracketed with the official United States Reports page on which the passage appears. Passages set without quotation marks are Society prose; every quotation mark in this record encloses the Court's or the Reporter's words.

Editorial note. The Court-authored sections of this record are SELECTED EXCERPTS, not the complete opinion. Two limitations are declared. First, the numbered and starred footnotes of the opinion, including the statutory definition of “substandard housing conditions” set out in the Court's footnote at page 28, are not reproduced. Second, the Court's extended description of the statutory scheme and of Project Area B at pages 28 through 31 is summarised rather than quoted at length.

Editorial note. The decision was unanimous; there is no separate opinion in this report. Obvious optical-recognition defects in the digitised bound volume have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered, modernised, or paraphrased inside a quotation. For any purpose requiring the complete official text, consult the bound volume through the canonical source recorded with this authority.

Editorial note. Under the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945, Congress declared substandard housing and blighted areas in the District injurious to the public health, safety, morals, and welfare, created the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency with power to acquire land by eminent domain, and directed the National Capital Planning Commission to prepare a comprehensive plan and redevelopment plans for specific project areas. The first project was Project Area B in Southwest Washington, an area whose surveys disclosed extreme dilapidation and whose population of 5,012 persons was 97.5 per cent Negro. The plan allocated land use in detail and required that at least one-third of the dwelling units be low-rent housing.

Editorial note. The appellants owned property at 712 Fourth Street, S.W., within Area B. It was not a dwelling and not slum housing: a department store stood on it. They objected that their sound commercial building could not be condemned merely to accomplish a better balanced and more attractive community, and that transferring the assembled land to private redevelopers made the taking one from one businessman for the benefit of another.

Editorial note. A three-judge District Court dismissed the complaint seeking to enjoin condemnation, sustaining the Act but construing it narrowly to permit condemnation only for the reasonable necessities of slum clearance and prevention, and expressing doubts about the Agency's power to take full title as distinguished from the offending buildings. 117 F. Supp. 705. On direct appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1253 the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment as modified by its opinion, rejecting both the narrowing construction and the doubts about full title.

Editorial note. The question was whether unoffending commercial property within a comprehensively planned redevelopment area may be condemned, and whether the assembled land may be resold or leased to private redevelopers. The Court held that it may. The public purpose was declared by Congress and is conclusive within specific constitutional limits; the redevelopment of a blighted area as a whole, rather than structure by structure, is within legislative competence; the use of private enterprise as the instrument of redevelopment does not defeat the public character of the taking; and the owner's constitutional entitlement is satisfied by just compensation.

Editorial note. Justice Douglas located the case within the police power, whose reach he declined to define, and held that a legislative declaration of the public interest is “well-nigh conclusive” subject only to specific constitutional limitations. The presence of eminent domain creates no exception to that deference, because the power of condemnation is merely the means to a legislatively chosen end.

Editorial note. He then widened the concept of public welfare to embrace aesthetic and spiritual values, so that Congress may decide the Capital shall be beautiful as well as sanitary. From that premise the remaining objections followed: the choice of means, including private redevelopers and resale to former owners, belongs to Congress; the area rather than the structure is the relevant unit of blight, because piecemeal removal would be a palliative and the cycle of decay would resume; the statutory standards were adequate to sustain delegation; and neither boundary lines, nor project size, nor the decision to take the fee rather than the buildings is subject to judicial second-guessing.

Editorial note. Berman is the hinge between the classical law of public use and the modern law of public purpose. It supplies the treatise's answer to the question what “public use” requires: a legislatively declared public purpose rationally served, not public ownership or public occupation of the condemned parcel. It also establishes that an individual owner cannot insist on the innocence of his own parcel where the legislature is treating an area as the unit of harm, and it links eminent domain analytically to the police power rather than treating the two as opposites.

Editorial note. Followed and extended. Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984), applied Berman's deference in sustaining compulsory transfer of fee titles from lessors to lessees. Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), relied on Berman for the proposition that public purpose is broadly defined and that courts do not review the wisdom of an integrated development plan. Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974), invoked Berman in sustaining land-use legislation addressed to family needs.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. V (Takings Clause), with Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926), on the police-power foundation of land-use regulation, and with Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), on the modern public-purpose standard.