66 
In the landmark case of Berman v. Parker,* the United States 
Supreme Court upheld a taking under the 1945 District of Columbia 
Redevelopment Act which authorized the clearance of substandard 
housing in blighted areas. The plaintiff owned porperty which itself 
was not blighted, but the Court upheld the taking of his property 
because it was part of an area which could be redeveloped as a whole 
in order to promote a better balanced and more attractive community. 
The Court grounded its decision on the police power which Congress 
possessed in its jurisdiction over the District of Columbia and stated: 
We deal, in other words, with what traditionally has been known as the police 
power. An attempt to define its reach or trace its outer limits is fruitless, for each 
case must turn on its own facts. The definition is essentially the product of legisla- 
tive determinations neither abstractly nor historically capable of complete defini- 
tion. Subject to specific constitutional limitations, when the legislature has spoken, 
the public interest has been declared in terms well-nigh conclusive. In such cases 
the legislature, not the judiciary, is the main guardian of the public needs to be 
served by social legislation * * * This principle admits of no exception merely be- 
cause the power of eminent domain is involved. The role of the judiciary in deter- 
mining whether that power of eminent domain is involved. The role of the judiciary 
in determining whether that power is being exercised for a public purpose is an 
extremely narrow one * * * We do not sit to determine whether a particular hous- 
ing project is or is not desirable * * * It is within the power of the legislature to 
determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as 
well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patrolled. If those who govern the 
District of Columbia decide that the Nation’s Capital should be beautiful as well as 
sanitary, there is nothing in the fifth amendment that stands in the way * * * Once 
the object is within the authority of Congress, the right to realize it through the 
exercise of eminent domain is clear. For the power of eminent domain is merely the 
means to the end.*4 
Berman and Parker, despite its permissive language, has one im- 
portant implication for new community development: it is a case that 
many legal scholars identify with questions of urban renewal and 
eminent domain; it is concerned, in short, with issues of “blight.” 
And, since new communities as discussed in this paper are envisioned 
for development on vacant, unblighted land, it hardly seems appro- 
priate to justify such an action by calling the new community site 
blighted, irrespective of its condition. 
The dubious nature of the “‘blighted”’ strategy was recently indicated 
in the State of Washington when an industrial commission sought to 
acquire a one thousand acre tract of land to be used as a major indus- 
trial park and port facility.“ Ironically, although the tract consisted 
of open, vacant, and choice farm land, the commission described it as 
“marginal” (i.e., blighted). The Supreme Court of the State of Wash- 
ington refused to accept such a tortured description and thus dis- 
allowed the acquisition. However, a lone, dissenting judge in that case 
recognized the unfortunate consequences produced by the marriage 
of the concepts of private use and blighted land, performed under the 
auspices of the “public purpose’ doctrine. Instead of directing his. 
attention to the condition of the land, he focused on the planned use, 
and then asked rhetorically whether that use was really private. He 
provided his own answer to this question when he suggested: 
_The notion of what is public use changes from time to time. Public use expands. 
with new need created by the advance of civilization and by the modern tendency 
of people to crowd into large cities. Such a taking as here proposed could not 
4 348 U.S. 26 (1954). 
4 Ibid. 
4 Hogue v. Port of Seattle, 54 Wash 2d 799, 341 p. 2d 171 (1959). 
