Kohl v. United States: The Federal Eminent Domain Ruling

Kohl v. United States, decided in 1875, is the Supreme Court decision that first recognized the federal government’s inherent power of eminent domain. Writing for the majority, Justice William Strong held that the national government can condemn private property for public use within any state, and that it does not need the state’s permission or a bespoke congressional procedure to do so. The ruling still anchors federal land acquisition today.

The Cincinnati Property Dispute

In 1872, Congress directed the Secretary of the Treasury to acquire a site in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a building that would house federal courts, a customs office, a post office, and other agencies. Two statutes authorized the purchase. The first, approved March 2, 1872, instructed the Secretary to buy “a central and suitable site.” The Appropriation Act of June 10, 1872, then authorized acquisition of the ground “at private sale or by condemnation.”¹

The targeted land included a parcel in which Mr. Kohl and other owners held a perpetual leasehold estate. When the government moved to condemn, the owners fought on two fronts. They argued that the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of Ohio had no jurisdiction over the case, and that the federal government could not condemn land unless Congress first passed a statute spelling out the procedure. The circuit court rejected both arguments and entered judgment for the government. The owners appealed to the Supreme Court.¹

The Question Before the Court

Before Kohl, the Supreme Court had never squarely decided whether the federal government held an inherent power to take private property. The owners did not deny that such a power might exist in some abstract sense, but they insisted it could not be used without detailed enabling legislation, and that federal courts had no authority to hear condemnation proceedings under the statutes then in force.

What the Court Decided

Justice Strong’s majority opinion ruled decisively for the government on both points. The Court held that the federal government possesses eminent domain as an inherent right, and may exercise it within any state “so far as is necessary to the enjoyment of the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution.”¹

On the jurisdictional question, the Court held that the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave federal circuit courts authority over “all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity” brought by the United States, reached condemnation proceedings. Congress did not have to pass a separate jurisdictional statute for eminent domain cases.¹

Justice Strong’s Reasoning

Strong built the opinion on the nature of sovereignty. Every independent government, he wrote, possesses eminent domain as a necessary attribute of its existence. State governments had always exercised the power, and no one questioned their right to do so. The federal government stood on equal footing within its own sphere: “That government is as sovereign within its sphere as the states are within theirs.”¹

The practical stakes were plain. If the national government could not independently acquire land, a single stubborn owner or a hostile state legislature could block construction of post offices, courthouses, or military installations. Strong put the point directly: the government’s “independent existence and perpetuity” could not survive if “the obstinacy of a private person, or if any other authority, can prevent the acquisition of the means or instruments by which alone governmental functions can be performed.”¹

The majority also rejected any state role in shaping how the power was used. “If the United States have the power, it must be complete in itself,” Strong wrote. “It can neither be enlarged nor diminished by a state. Nor can any state prescribe the manner in which it must be exercised.”¹

Justice Field’s Dissent

Justice Stephen Field dissented. He did not dispute that the federal government held eminent domain power in principle, but he objected to how the majority allowed it to be exercised. Field argued that Congress needed to pass specific legislation creating a condemnation procedure before federal courts could hear such cases. A condemnation proceeding was not, in his view, an ordinary lawsuit. It was an investigation to determine a property’s value before the government could take it, and the existing jurisdictional statutes did not cover that kind of proceeding.¹

Kohl and the Fifth Amendment

The Fifth Amendment provides that “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” That language does not create the power of eminent domain. It assumes the power already exists and places limits on how it may be used. The Supreme Court later described the Takings Clause as “a tacit recognition of a preexisting power to take private property for public use, rather than a grant of new power.”²

Kohl is the case that first confirmed that reading at the federal level. The national government’s eminent domain authority is implied by the Constitution’s structure and by the Fifth Amendment’s own assumptions, not dependent on any express textual grant. The two constitutional limits are that the taking must serve a public use and that the owner must receive just compensation.

How Later Cases Built on Kohl

Kohl became the foundation that subsequent decisions built on, each pushing at the edges of the doctrine it established.

Cherokee Nation v. Southern Kansas Railway Co. (1890)

Fifteen years after Kohl, the Supreme Court extended the same logic to federal territory occupied by Indian tribes. The Court held that the United States could exercise eminent domain within Cherokee lands, reasoning that it “would be very strange if the national government, in the execution of its rightful authority, could exercise the power of eminent domain in the several States, and could not exercise the same power in a Territory.” The Court cited Kohl for the proposition that federal eminent domain “is essential to the independent existence and perpetuity of the United States, and is not dependent upon the consent of the States.”³

Berman v. Parker (1954)

In Berman, the Court broadened the definition of “public use.” The case involved a federal urban renewal project in Washington, D.C., where the government condemned a department store that was not itself blighted as part of a larger area redevelopment plan. The Court upheld the taking, writing that “the concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive,” and that once Congress establishes a public purpose, “the means of executing the project are for Congress and Congress alone to determine.”⁴ The decision effectively shifted the constitutional test from “public use” to “public purpose,” a more permissive standard.

Kelo v. City of New London (2005)

The most controversial extension came in Kelo, where the Court allowed a city to condemn private homes and transfer the land to a private developer as part of an economic development plan. The majority held that economic benefits qualified as a permissible public use under the Fifth Amendment.⁵ The decision was widely unpopular and prompted dozens of states to pass laws restricting the use of eminent domain for private economic development. The arc from Kohl to Kelo shows how a power initially affirmed for post offices and courthouses gradually stretched to cover far more contested purposes.

Why Kohl Still Matters

Kohl v. United States resolved a question that had been left open since the founding. By grounding federal eminent domain in the nature of sovereignty rather than in any specific constitutional text, the Court ensured that the national government could build the infrastructure a growing country needed without depending on the cooperation of fifty different state legislatures. The core holding has never been overturned or seriously questioned. Every federal highway, military base, and national park that required condemned land traces its legal authority back, at least in part, to the principle Justice Strong articulated in 1875: that a sovereign government which cannot acquire the tools it needs to function cannot long survive.

1
Justia. Kohl v. United States, 91 U.S. 367 (1875)
2
Constitution Annotated. Amdt5.10.1 Overview of Takings Clause
3
Library of Congress. Cherokee Nation v. Kansas Railway Co., 135 U.S. 641 (1890)
4
Justia. Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954)
5
Justia. Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)