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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

#141

Post by gowld »

ceejayoz wrote: post #76
saas_sam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No country on Earth affords equal rights to citizens and non-citizens. If this "terrifies" you, I encourage you to reflect on your fears and whether some of them may be disproportionate to reality.

> No country on Earth affords equal rights to citizens and non-citizens. That's fine, but affording no rights to non-citizens would be highly problematic. Some argue the Constitution doesn't protect the rights of illegal immigrants, for example, but it makes clear distinctions by using "persons" in some spots and "citizens" in others. Persons have a right to due process. Citizens have a right to vote. The difference…

The Constitution is really quite bad at making things clear. Arbitrary rhetorical flourishes became the turning points of precendential cases, because quill and parchment made it hard to express ideas clearly.

The average ruling in a single minor case today is longer than the entire Constitution.

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

#142

Post by jhayward »

dragonwriter wrote: post #109
whatshisface wrote: post #6

> Justice Thomas agreed with the result in the case, Timbs v. Indiana, No. 17-1091, but said he would have gotten to the same place by a different route. While the majority relied on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, Justice Thomas said he would have ruled “the right to be free from excessive fines is one of the ‘privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ protected by the 14th Amendment.”…

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.

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

#143

Post by gowld »

learc83 wrote: post #83
sbov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this completely screw over corporations? Or do we have some other mechanisms that will continue to protect them from these abuses them but not other types of "persons"?

Corporations in general have the constitutional protections that people acting in a group have. Corporate personhood is just a convenient legal fiction. For example corporations don't have a right to free speech because they are "persons" but because we extend the rights of the individuals who make up the group to the group itself.

> 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.

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

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

aqme28 wrote: post #136
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…

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.

> The constitution really clearly delineates between "persons" and "citizens."

It uses at least three different terms, citizens, persons, and “the people” (and the last is the most common where it concerns rights). The precise boundaries of the latter is fairly hotly contested, and the Courts to date haven't given precise guidance (it is clearly broader than citizens and narrower than persons, but the exact boundary is murky; the US DoJ has often advocated for a definition of citizens and some subset of lawfully admitted aliens, possibly only LPRs, but others have taken other positions.)

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

#145

Post by gowld »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #2

A swipe against excessive civil forfeitures succeeds. These aggressive actions require citizens to forfeit property far in excess of any harm committed. In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine. We have laws to punish illegal behavior, but it’s not right that all your property get snatched up too. The most egregious of these cases often involve no due process at…

This case was about criminal forfeiture, not civil forfeiture. The aggrieved was convicted of crime, and the forfeiture was a fine for that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Civil_versus_criminal_forfeiture

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

#146

Post by gowld »

olliej wrote: post #22
DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #2

A swipe against excessive civil forfeitures succeeds. These aggressive actions require citizens to forfeit property far in excess of any harm committed. In the court case, a man had his car seized when caught selling a few hundred dollars of heroine. We have laws to punish illegal behavior, but it’s not right that all your property get snatched up too. The most egregious of these cases often involve no due process at…

Also the maximum fine for the offense is $10k, and he was given $1200 in fines. Yet a $42k car was taken. That was 4x the maximum penalty, and almost 20x the fine. How that was ever legal remains confusing to me.

It wasn't legal; that's what this case is about.

The authorities sometimes break laws.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

oh_sigh wrote: post #127
mehrdadn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> noncitizens necessarily do not enjoy the privileges and immunities of citizens. Would you have more reading on this? It's something I've wondered about but never really come across a comprehensive answer to. What rights do noncitizens not have that citizens do?

Right to vote(though this can be stripped from felon citizens), right to peaceable assembly, right to bear arms. The Constitution distinguishes natural rights of all persons vs rights and privileges of "the people" being citizens and non-citizen legal residents.

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by moate »

arenaninja wrote: post #91
Isamu wrote: post #36

Good thing, it only took about 35 years or so. This was one of legacies of the glorious War On Drugs.

I guess my thinking is how does this affect the funding for Trump's wall. IIRC about $2.5billion was supposed to come from DoD drug seizures... this case seems highly relevant

It likely doesn't.

My assumption would be that those seizures would have already had to pass the constitutional muster because they were federal cases. This is simply the SC stating that they interpret the constitution as being the law of the land, and that the states can't be more punitive than the feds. That money will still be there.

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

#149

Post by tyingq »

gowld wrote: post #146
olliej wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the maximum fine for the offense is $10k, and he was given $1200 in fines. Yet a $42k car was taken. That was 4x the maximum penalty, and almost 20x the fine. How that was ever legal remains confusing to me.

It wasn't legal; that's what this case is about. The authorities sometimes break laws.

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.

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

#150

Post by crazypyro »

gowld wrote: post #146
olliej wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the maximum fine for the offense is $10k, and he was given $1200 in fines. Yet a $42k car was taken. That was 4x the maximum penalty, and almost 20x the fine. How that was ever legal remains confusing to me.

It wasn't legal; that's what this case is about. The authorities sometimes break laws.

This case wasn't about the legality of taking the car. It was simply about whether the 8th Amendment applies to states.
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