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U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#211

Post by stale2002 »

jhayward wrote: post #142
dragonwriter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the rest of the court found the the excessive punishment protection of the eighth amendment was applied to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment as an essential right and therefore a component of “liberty” as used in the due process clause. Thomas disagrees with this fairly conventional incorporation argument and the idea of the protection as a fundamental right, but feels instead that a…

Note also that corporations are 'people' but not 'citizens' and would likewise be disenfranchised from the protections provided by the bill of rights and the constitution when it came to state law. edit: there seems to be some lawyering about the difference between the meaning of 'people' and 'persons' that I do not understand at this time.

> corporations are 'people'

A corporation, is, by definition, a group of people, yes. And those people who make up the group have rights that are protected by the constitution.

Or in other words, a corporation is the plural form of the word 'person', in many situations.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#212

Post by School-Cotton »

crooked-v wrote: post #192
User23 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the notion that citizens don't have privileges, because otherwise citizenship is worthless. Obviously the natural rights of all persons ought to be respected.

Citizens have the most important privilege: the ability to vote.

What makes you say that the ability to vote is the most important privilege? For example, I'd happily give up my right to vote before my right to legal due process. I'd rather live in undemocratic Singapore than in somewhere with free elections but widespread corruption and poor rule of law like India, Turkey, or Mexico.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#213

Post by jecxjo »

sathackr wrote: post #205
KorematsuFred wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.

It's a welcome check on the Executive and Legislative branches. Anyone can become President, and anyone can become a lawmaker. It takes a lifetime of respect to earn a seat on the Supreme Court bench.

Respect is not quite the word I'd use. Yes you have to put in your time, but politics play just as much a role in SCOTUS appointments as any other branch. The major difference is that the appointees do not pander to the public for votes, rather they pander to those we have voted into office.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#214

Post by jecxjo »

da_chicken wrote: post #160
slowmovintarget wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that they didn't rule on it. But they did write an opinion that was highly suggestive of what the particular finding in this case should have been. It doesn't carry the weight of law, but it isn't nothing, either.

Oh, definitely. It was a minimal ruling, but it's still a landmark. Honestly, though, this case is so perfect that I almost wonder if the Supreme Court of Indiana didn't rule the way they did just to force the issue.

The more I follow SCOTUS rulings the more I think this happens quite often.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#215

Post by jeromegv »

sathackr wrote: post #205
KorematsuFred wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this very remarkable about American legal system. The supreme court could have technically showed some bleeding heart by not showing judicial restraint. Instead they just did their job. Americans must thank this judicial culture.

It's a welcome check on the Executive and Legislative branches. Anyone can become President, and anyone can become a lawmaker. It takes a lifetime of respect to earn a seat on the Supreme Court bench.

I'm sure lots of women would not agree with your last statement.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#216

Post by kevin_b_er »

gumby wrote: post #131

BTW, if you have civil forfeiture at all (which I think should't exist), why does the money go to the seizing agency? Shouldn't it all go straight to the general fund to avoid a conflict of interest? Ditto punitive damages in court cases (where the defendent pays, say, $3M in restitution but say $500M in punitive damages because they could easily afford the $3M and need to suffer enough to change their ways). Why doe…

Some states have laws that say as such, often passed within the last decade.

Then the local law enforcement agencies "partner" with the feds and the forfeiture goes through the federal govt, and the local law enforcement gets a kickback.

This practice of kickbacks to circumvent state law was limited by the previous US President, but was now being un-limited and expanded under the current one.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#217

Post by StillBored »

Spivak wrote: post #179
tyingq wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, nobody will go to jail for it. I'm happy for the ruling, but it doesn't seem to do much to discourage future abuse, since nobody actually gets held accountable.

I'm not sure why you want someone to go to jail for this incident specifically. The police acted in a manner that, at the time, they believed to be lawful. When the state was sued they also thought the police acted within the law, backed the officers, and won their appeal. Then after both sides made the best case they could, the supreme court ruled their actions were ultimately unconstitutional. Do you really expect…

I think the real problem here is that the courts are failing to provide the "independent judiciary" role. The whole point is for an independent expert to look at the law and situation and make a determination. The problem is that the local/state judiciaries very infrequently find a police organizations behaviors unlawful. Time and time again, the local law enforcement stretches the definition of unreasonable/excessive/etc and the courts go along with it. The statistics are completely out of whack (to lazy to dig up the reference I saw a few years ago) on the side of the police. Which is why there are so many of these crazy cases making themselves to the supreme court. Its the airport search situation, at no point has a court actually stepped in and said this is unreasonable, which is why we find ourselves in a situation of being naked body scanned, felt up, poked and prodded like animals without a drop of probable cause.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#218

Post by School-Cotton »

mehrdadn wrote: post #206
School-Cotton wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: the right to vote, the right to run for elected office, the right to enter US territory and remain there indefinitely.

I meant beyond the obvious right to vote and be in the country etc.

Well, I'm not sure what you consider obvious or not, but those are the most important ones.

From Wikipedia, some other examples are the right to be considered for federal employment (most Federal Government jobs being closed to non-citizens), access to US consular officials if arrested abroad, and exemption from certain real estate taxes[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Investment_in_Real_Pro...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#219

Post by gamblor956 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #162
aqme28 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitution really clearly delineates between "persons" and "citizens." I hate the notion that none of the protections apply to noncitizens. Additionally, a lot of the constitution is actually phrased as limits on the government rather than rights as citizens.

> Additionally, a lot of the constitution is actually phrased as limits on the government rather than rights as citizens. This is because the Constitution is supposed to be an enumeration of what the government is allowed to do. The limitations are there to narrow the scope of those enumerated powers. In this context, enumerating most rights of citizens would have been redundant. The enumerated citizen rights were th…

This is because the Constitution is supposed to be an enumeration of what the government is allowed to do.

This is simply not true. The Founders lived through the Articles of Confederation, in which the founding document explicitly enumerated the only powers the government would have. The Constitution was an explicit rejection of that philosophy, and was intended to create a government with broad powers. The point of the Bill of Rights was to place limits on those broad powers.

Unfortunately, Commerce Clause abuse and the effective neutralization of the 10th Amendment has created the opposite situation where the government can do anything it wants as long as it isn't specifically prohibited, and citizens are only guaranteed rights if they are specified.

This is also not true. A great many of the Founders considered the 10th Amendment to be meaningless fluff added only to mollify the slave-owners who wanted restrictions on the Federal government's ability to curtail their ownership of slaves.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Puts Limits on Police Power to Seize Private Property

#220

Post by [deleted] »

icebraining wrote: post #154
gowld wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we extend the rights The constitutional basis for that is not secure. It's not obvious that your right to free speech extends to secretly paying someone else to speak. If I leave an iPod in a public park playing a speech, the authorities can remove or disable the iPod, not a violation of my speech rights.

I'm pretty sure they can also remove you; what they can't do is remove you based on the content of your speech , but then again I doubt they can have a policy of only removing iPods playing political speeches with certain viewpoints.

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