The Supreme Court is back in session with major decisions coming on the legality of Obamacare, Arizona’s anti-immigration law, and the right of property owners to due process.

How’s the court expected rule in these cases and what are the likely implications of its decisions?

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Freddy’s in Brooklyn is a happening place that has been named one of the city’s best bars by the Village Voice, Esquire, and The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Freddy’s—and the surrounding neighborhood—is smack-dab in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project, a multi-million-dollar, 22-acre development that is intended to create “an urban utopia” in the language of developer Bruce Ratner, and a new, publicly subsidized home to Ratner’s Nets, who currently play NBA basketball (if you can call it that) in New Jersey.

But don’t mistake Atlantic Yards as one more instance of the market-driven transformations for which New York is rightly famous. It’s actually the latest case of eminent domain abuse, where private property is seized by the state on dubious grounds and then immediately handed over to private interests for private gain.

In this case, the Empire State Development Corporation has designated the thriving area as blighted to facilitate the taking of privately owned houses and businesses without having to pay full market value. Ratner, whose partners in the venture include rapper Jay Z and the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, stands to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal, all thanks to the brute force of the state.

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