A drearily familiar dialectic is on display here: Government is behaving badly in order to silence protests of other bad behavior. It is violating the Constitution’s First Amendment, stifling speech about its violation of the Fifth Amendment, as it was properly construed until 2005.
Founded in 1934,
Central Radio maintains communication, sonar and camera equipment on vessels at Norfolk Naval Station. The business is in a building designed for its needs near the waterfront. Company Vice President Kelly Dickinson says, “We can drive five minutes and be on board a ship.”
But Old Dominion University (ODU) is nearby and covetous. It wants the land on which Central Radio sits, and through ODU’s Real Estate Foundation it is well along toward seizing it by
inciting the city government to wield the power of eminent domain. Condemnation proceedings against Central Radio have moved to the compensation phase. Dickinson says that the compensation will be insufficient to enable the business to construct a comparable building, let alone buy land for it. ODU, whose plans for the neighborhood remain interestingly vague and may include a shopping center, is exploiting the judicial evisceration of the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, the history of which is this:
