Im with the ranchers in the case of Sutter Buttes. They pre-date the state purchase of the land, which it did without access rights, and before the state turned it into a park.

It reminds me of the phrase: "Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine".

Maybe it will work out for the state in the long run, but it took the risk to buy land without access, with full knowledge, and cant cry foul later.

Given the land's Native American heritage, the ranchers leaning "We were here first" argument is... really something.

Private property rights are only as good as the government that recognizes them. Keep in mind that the government that gives you private property rights (California in this case) also has the right to take as much of your land as they want for 'public use'. If the government wants to play hardball, it is perfectly reasonable for them to build a road across the land and open it to the public. You can't stop them, your only recourse is to argue how much they owe you for doing it.

That is absolutely not true. There are many restrictions on eminent domain. We live in a society of laws, not a feudal one where the government has god-powers.

If you are making a practical force argument, the government is physically capable of illegally exterminating the ranchers, but there would also be consequences.

It is absolutely true that they can take land for public use in the US. ‘Public use’ is the exact phrase used in the constitution.

Building a road or trails across private land is literally a textbook example of eminent domain.

It isnt that simple. There is 250 years of case law defining what constitutes public use, and the situations where it can be justified. This includes when you can use it to build a road or trail, and when you cant.

Can you point to some precedent where building a public road to a public park across unimproved land was not a valid use of the takings clause?

The precedent is that eminent domain is remarkably unrestricted as to what constitutes 'public use' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London). Condemning occupied and habitable homes to build a shopping center is an allowed use per precedent at the federal level (additional restrictions apply in many states). Eminent domain for building a road is basically a given if that is the method that is chosen.

I do not have a citation.

I dont like Kelo at all and doubt the current SCOTUS would rules that same, but understand the ruling. That said, in it's defense, the court was weighing the claimed benefit of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue. They would not have ruled the same if the public benefit were a park bench with no economic value?

Re-Native Americans, Luckily, both law and society have improved in the 200 years since the 1800's when Spain annexed Alta California.

I assume you think the forceful taking of native lands by the government was bad, so why do you think it is good to roll back the clock and justify doing it today?

There is an inherent contradiction here. It cant have been bad to do then, but good to do now.

"why do you think it is good to roll back the clock and justify doing it today?"

They could justify giving it back?

Someone could make a slightly stronger case for giving it back to natives Maidu Indians (depending on the facts of acquisition), but they arent.

This is what I meant.

Or in this particular case, if the landowners are so stubborn that they can not even allow for a road crossing their land, they could at least hint at the idea?

Who would hint at what idea?

So the farmers does not want to give access to the land to the people.

Maybe the government should remind them how they got their land in the first place?

The government should remind the farmers that last time someone resisted, the government exterminated them?

You are right :) sounds like a pretty bad idea.

In-group vs out-group. States can take land from out-group, not from in-group (which is why the in-group participates in that state). Also, as someone else pointed out, this land was taken from Mexico, who in turn took it from the Spanish crown. The Spanish took it from the "natives" (scare-quotes since I don't know if that tribe took it from another preceding tribe).

In some cases, the law can be used to force the sale of an easement for access to a landlocked property. So, in that sense, it can amount to an emergency for you.

But it is still a sale.

I have read about it in some cases, but it seems to depend on the situation. I suspect (and hope) that this is not one of the cases, given that the government bought the land with full knowledge that it was land locked.

It can be done even in that order of events.

I don't really agree with you, it's not in the public interest that property owners should be able to bogart land merely by encircling it, however the situation should arise, and it invites obvious abuses. Incidentally, the property owners in the article are doing just that, first by selling landlocked property evidently with an agreement among eachother to never sell a public right of way, and then by selling tours that wouldn't be necessary if they had, a form of rent seeking.

I think the fact that the state state initiated and brought about this situation has a major influence on my opinion. The state created the problem which it is now presumably struggling to resolve.

how is it a problem? eminent domain is basically for this. they should buy a thin slice to make a road.

I dont think the need is sufficiently compelling.

The Californian public got by just fine without access for 180 years. There is no urgent need for the public to access the location. Nobody will die or have major hardship without it.

The landowners will not die without a small sliver of their land, either. And one option benefits a lot more people than the other.

Like I said above, I think there needs to be a extremely compelling need to use eminent domain.

I dont think the government should be engaging in minor utilitarian optimization. That is to say, there should be an very high threshold to use government power even if the the cost to the individual is quite small.

Where the government has trump cards which override individual rights and freedoms, they should be used rarely and out of necessity.

I'm not so sure of that.

It appears that the land had an easement for access which transfers on sale.

> The land was served by a road easement at the time it was purchased by the state. An underlying landowner sued asserting that the easement was insufficient to permit park visitor travel between Pennington Road and the park, and lost. The court determined that the easement was sufficient to allow visitor use

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter_Buttes

https://casetext.com/case/campbell-v-state-1088

That makes makes sense, so there is limited access, but not permissive for open public access.

If the fact that that these families grabbed that land before the union blocks state from having an easement to access the land, then the state should protect private property of these ranchers at all. So if some private militia enters and forcefully take over the ranchers land, the state should not intervene then.

Sounds like an interesting theory, but I dont follow. can you explain it in different terms?

OK, let's do this. But then, at the same time, all grazing rights on public land should be stripped from ranchers.

California needs to do away with restriction on property tax raise. They tax is probably ridiculously low for the amount of land they own.

Why? They arent doing anything wrong, in my opinion. The state exists to serve the people, not the people to serve the state.

Seems like a large escalation. I think you need to justify this one.

Here in Spain you can't neither freely roam around into some protected nature spaces, but that's done to preserve a delicate ecosystem. Such as Urdaibai, or Doñana.