Housing Authority v. Suydam Investors, LLC

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

LONG, J.

Eminent domain is the awesome power of the sovereign to take property for public use without the owner’s consent. Nichols on Eminent Domain § 1.11, at 1-7 (Sackman ed.3d ed.2002). Although that power has been exercised in one form or another since Roman times, 1 Nichols, supra, § 1.12, at 1-14 (citing Annals of Tacitus, Bk. I, p. 75), the actual term “eminent domain” was not coined until 1625 when Hugo Grotius described the power this way:

[T]he property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the state, so that the state or he who acts for…