What goes around, comes around...

Sounds like poetic justice, no?

A US Supreme Court Judge could lose his country farmhouse thanks to a controversial law which he himself voted to bring in.

Furious protesters are plotting to seize David Souter's $150,000 (£86,400) 19th century home and turn it into a hotel after he voted to give towns the legal right to make compulsory purchases. They view his support for the legislation as an affront to every American's inviolable right to personal property.

Judge Souter
Judge Souter

In retaliation, they are determined to make him pay with the loss of his home in the countryside outside the town of Weare in New Hampshire, where the official state motto is "Live Free or Die". The hotel would be called The Lost Freedom, and its restaurant, The Just Desserts.

Under the new law, a town may issue a compulsory purchase order - known in America as purchase by "eminent domain" - on a private property and pass it on to a commercial developer if it considers that the development would benefit the town and its people as a whole.

Mr Souter cast the swing vote in the unpopular 5-to-4 court decision in the case of Kelo vs City of New London, Connecticut.

Opinion polls show that 95 per cent of Americans disapprove of the ruling and believe that compulsory purchase should be used only to transfer ownership of blighted property which has become a danger to the community.

Logan Darrow Clements is the publishing entrepreneur and free-markets campaigner behind the counter-attack.

"By his own ruling, Weare the town has the justification for such an action because the hotel project we are submitting will benefit the town by creating new jobs and a higher tax revenue," he said.

Let's hope they succeed!