ON JUNE 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court announced one of its most notorious and divisive decisions in recent memory: Kelo v. City of New London. At issue was the Connecticut town's use of eminent domain to seize several private homes and commercial lots on behalf of the Pfizer Corporation, which had already built a large research complex nearby and intended to erect offices and research facilities on and around the residential properties.
Writing for the five-member majority, Justice John Patti Stevens argued that New London's redevelopment project qualified as a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment because the city was seeking to provide "appreciable benefits to the community" including "new jobs and increased tax revenue" Toward that end, it had drafted a "comprehensive redevelopment plan" and was "endeavoring to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational uses of land, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts."
As a precedent for this holding, Stevens cited Euclid v. Ambler, a 1926 case known mostly to law students, their professors, and city planners. As the legal scholar Michael Allan Wolf argues in The Zoning of America, his illuminating and richly detailed new book on the case, Euclid was one of the most far-reaching Supreme Court decisions of the last century. "If not for that key 1926 decision," he writes, "most Americans would not be living in 'zoned' cities."
Kelo是近年來影響美國都市計劃界的重大案例，地方公共利益在大法官的詮釋下，好像錫箔一樣，變的又長又薄。這也是1926年Euclid案例後另一個令人矚目的判例。
1926年的Euclid賦予土地使用分區管制合法地位，2005年的Kelo進一步擴大地方政府的徵收權，只要該權力的運作可以創造更大的地方利益。對美國自由派人士而言，這是令人不敢置信的判例。但是對於倡導開發至上與市場法則的保守派人士而言，這可是一大勝利。
ECFA是甚麼?對誰有利?對誰有害?誰來決定這種攸關大眾利益改變的大事?總統?國會?公投?外國財團?這時候的台灣，有誰關心公共利益嗎?
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