The SCOTUS case Gorsuch got right
Tyler v. Hennepin shows why you don't need private property to ensure justice.
The Supreme Court ruled against Minnesota’s Hennepin County today, finding that it violated the Constitution by taking an elderly woman’s home after she failed to pay back taxes and then pocketing the profits. Tyler v. Hennepin County was one of those cases where most people will have a pretty strong intuition about what the just outcome should be even without knowing many of the details; the thought of a 94-year-old woman losing her home is bad enough, and someone profiting off of that is even worse. And that, presumably, is why Mother Jones called it “a unanimous opinion that provides liberals, conservatives, and libertarians a rare chance to celebrate the same thing.”
Still, as a rule of thumb, it’s always a good idea to think twice whenever you find yourself celebrating anything with libertarians. In this case I agree that SCOTUS arrived at justice; but the Court gave two rationales for their decision, and when we compare them we can see the antidemocratic, irrational injustice at the heart of the capitalist system.
