There is no excuse for civil asset forfeiture whenever the owner of any property (“asset”) seized and set for forfeiture by the state is within the personal jurisdiction of the state.  None.  And yet most instances of civil asset forfeiture in today’s America occur when the owners of the property are within the government’s in personam jurisdiction.  The too-convenient legal fiction that the property, rather than the property’s owner or possessor, is the wrongdoer is used by the state to circumvent many, perhaps most, of the procedural restrictions (such as trial by jury) designed to protect innocent people from overreaching government officials.  (I do not here address the question of whether or not civil asset forfeiture is justified when the owner of the asset is outside of the state’s jurisdiction.)

Back in the mid-1990s, Adam Pritchard and I wrote a few articles on civil asset forfeiture (such as this one), as well as this op-ed that was originally published in the Washington Times.  I will try soon to make available Adam’s and my longer law-review essays on this matter.

Civil asset forfeiture, certainly as used today in the United States, is a crime.  A rather vile crime, at that.  Read, for example, George Will’s column in today’s Washington Post.  Or this 2010 study by the Institute for Justice (which Will links to in his column.)  And yet governments practice civil asset forfeiture routinely, mostly in the name of fighting the misnamed “war on drugs.”

Any agency that engages in such activities is uncivilized.  To trust such an agency with money and power is folly.

… is from U.S. Judge Learned Hand (as quoted on page 197 of Archibald Cox‘s 1987 book, The Court and the Constitution):

Will someone please tell me why the enjoyment of property is not a personal right?

Cox adds, immediately after quoting Judge Hand, the following: “In the final analysis the justification for treating First Amendment liberties as ‘preferred rights’ calling for strict judicial scrutiny of any government limitations [while treating property rights as deserving only far-less-strict judicial protection from government intrusion] must be found in value judgments distilled from our entire constitutional history, rather than in inferences drawn exclusively from the language or structure of the Constitution.”

In this short video, entrepreneur T.J. Rodgers explains clearly some of the likely consequences of the Buffett Rule.  (HT Clemson U. economist Skip Sauer)

… is from page 811 of Paul Johnson’s splendid 1991 book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830:

The common assumption is that intellectuals and soldiers are natural enemies.  Not so.  Intellectuals tend to be fascinated by power, not least military power, and are only too anxious to harness the soldiers to the chariots of their ideas.  Equally, the soldiers and the politicians who both direct and are carried along by them have no objection to attaching intellectual horsepower to their gun carriages.

Yep.

And ordinary people, accepting without questioning the creationist myth that consciously exercised centralized power must lie at least at the root – if not spread thoroughly throughout the branches – of social order, accede to the schemes of intellectuals teamed with soldiers and other deployers of force.

Reason’s Lucy Steigerwald applauds one of the very few members of Congress who deserve applause: freshman Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), here for his principled opposition to Uncle Sam’s dangerously misguided and unconstitutional military and war-state efforts.

This one is superb!  Steve Landsburg on Paul Krugman and on music – spiced perfectly with Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye singing a song that’s long been especially close to my heart.  (Pop quiz for my fellow New Orleanians: Who was the first king of Bacchus?)

And David Henderson on both U.S. war-state efforts and Krugman.

Here’s David Harsanyi on the decaffeinated tea party.

Thanks to Mark Perry for posting this just-published short video of me talking last summer about unintended consequences.

Cato’s David Boaz, inspired by Bastiat, is rightly critical of the Obama administration’s latest piece of cronyism, namely, suppressing competition facing powerful friends by punitively taxing Americans who choose to buy solar panels made in China.  (To be fair to Mr. Obama, such cronyism is bipartisan, endorsed by members of both major U.S. political parties as well as by a string of U.S. presidents regardless of party and of the contents of their public prattling.  Because the public largely believes in mercantilism – it’s the economic equivalent of thinking it to be obvious that the sun revolves around a stationary earth – officials seeking office will continue to peddle such snake oil.)