United States v. Town of Nahant

ALDRICH, District Judge.

We look upon a case like this, where the government in its sovereignty exercises its right to take private or municipal property for its necessary public purposes, as somewhat exceptional in respect to rules of damage or compensation. The right to take is a strictly arbitrary right, a right without any qualification, and one which at once cuts through all individual and inferior government conditions. The federal government arbitrarily, and as a supreme entity, takes, without question, for its own necessary defenses and other public uses, whatever it lays its hand…