As a legal idea, civil forfeiture is something the state specifically empowers police to do. This is on top of cops pretty much being able to do what they want without recourse. Normal civilians don't have this luxury.

Since when does the state have such power? The state only has powers granted by the people.

Legitimacy stems from the consent of the governed. The state and the Constitution determine what powers the state has, eg, by passing laws and by subjecting them to judicial review.

(Referendums notwithstanding.)

A pretty sentence, but since the courts have upheld both qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture, it appears the people have granted the power to do so.

Ok but by what principle? We can change the law.

By voting? Both sides support it

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Aye, there's the rub. No politician wants to be portrayed as "soft on crime". Until the problem becomes too large for the average person to ignore, the law isn't going to change. A smart police force stays just below that threshold.

IIUC in US constitutional terms the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is actually "innocent until something (eg a trial) pronounces you guilty".

The difference being that who needs to prove what can be quite flexible.

Guilt in criminal contexts is assessed under the "reasonable doubt" standard of proof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_doubt).

In civil contexts however, the legal standard is the much lower "preponderance of evidence" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)#Preponde...).

I agree, my intent was not to say that there are no standard at all, but rather that the constitutional phrasing leaves a lot latitude.

For example congress could legislate that some specific crimes should use "preponderance of evidence" rather than "resonable doubt" or even require that the defendants prove their own innocence beyond resonable doubt.

In the case of civil forfeiture I suspect that the individual whose property was seized has a constitutional right to appeal in some way, but also the constitution has little to say about the rules of that appeal process.

Imagine you arrange some "send goods, receive payment later" kind of deal with someone; you send them the goods but they never pay you. So you bring them to court... and now you have to prove that they did not pay you. While they claim they did and even gave you a signed receipt which you must have thrown away.

So naturally, because in most civil cases its the other party's inaction that's supposed to be punished, courts adopt "guilty until proven otherwise" stance. Now it's the other party that has to show a receipt signed by you, or to show their bank statement that says they've transfered money to you, etc. That's one reason why there is so much paper trail in business and commerce — so that's when someone sues you, you could use all that paper to cover your ass.

This discussion (not just your reply) wasn’t sitting right with me so I had to look into it a bit closer to get more clarity. While it’s true that the concept of innocent until proven guilty doesn’t exist in civil cases, it doesn’t appear that the opposite is generally true. The burden of proof is still on the plaintiff, though the bar is much lower than for criminal cases (which comes as no surprise).