Abstract

This essay juxtaposes two Supreme Court cases, Kelo v. City of New London, and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales. Both reflect on the meanings of home as simultaneously the source of security against the focal point of anxieties about crossing between the categories of the private and the public. This essay traces the specter of doubleness that haunts the home in the law: the uncanny ways in which the home emerges as the exemplary private institution and the exemplary public concern in our society.