Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by rayiner on Friday November 13, 2015 @11:01AM (#10560488)

You have to take decisions like that in context. That forfeiture arose under Michigan law. The Supreme Court wasn't saying that it's a good idea to allow the state to seize the car without accounting for the wife's interest. It was saying that Michigan's lack of an innocent owner defense to the seizure didn't rise to the level of a Constitutional violation.

A lot of decisions that seem "outrageously stupid" make more sense if you think of the Supreme Court as an umpire. The democratically-elected legislatures are supposed to make good decisions. The unelected Supreme Court should only check them if they do something egregiously against the rules. The Court should let the "game play on" if there's not a very good reason to say that a 200+ year old document trumps a state legislature's contemporary decisions.

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Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by drumdance on Friday November 13, 2015 @11:25AM (#10560630)

The right to unreasonable search and seizure at the Federal level supersedes all state law. This was just a bad Supreme Court decision, morally in the same "ballpark" as Plessy vs. Ferguson

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Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by tptacek on Friday November 13, 2015 @11:37AM (#10560709)

Unfortunately for this argument, the word "reasonable" means pretty much the same thing now as it did in 1787, and is clearly meant to delegate most of the answer to this question to the people (in the form of the legislature), and not the philosopher-kings of the court.

You will of course come up with many arguments, virtually all of which I'll agree with, that asset forfeiture is "unreasonable". The problem is that other people disagree with you, and, specifically and distinctively with this particular item in the bill of rights, the court is supposed to defer to the legislature as much as it can.

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Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by jbooth on Friday November 13, 2015 @02:10PM (#10561773)

I'm not a lawyer but this strongly disagrees with everything I learned in high school civics class about judicial review, and with many many high profile court cases overturning popularly enacted laws, from Marbury v Madison through to the current day gay marriage ban reversals.

It seems pretty cut and dried to me that the 4th amendment supersedes any law passed in direct opposition, just like the 1st or 2nd would. This isn't a case where the courts would be making multiple logical leaps to invalidate a law they disagree with, you can describe it in 4 words "seizure without a trial", then look at the 4th amendemnt.

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Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by tptacek on Friday November 13, 2015 @02:44PM (#10561973)

SCOTUS can of course overturn any statute for any reason, valid or not, subject to very few practical restrictions. So when we're talking about where they'll intervene, we're always doing that with the proviso that we're predicting their behavior based on their charter and their history.

Having said that, the history of 4A law suggests that the word "reasonable" in 4A connotes a mandate for unusual deference to the legislature --- and SCOTUS already tends strongly towards deference.

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Re:Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs by drumdance on Saturday November 14, 2015 @09:24AM (#10565755)

I'm not arguing that the Supreme Court can do whatever it wants. I'm arguing that they are morally wrong. They've been morally wrong before and in a few cases overturned the previous precedent.

But the only way they will do that again is if there is public pressure. So even if a lot of people disagree with me, the proper course of action is not to shut up and take my medicine. The proper course is to keep raising hell about it.

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