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judiciary property rights

Greed & the Innocent Owners

“We know there are abuses of the forfeiture system,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declares. “We know it because it’s been documented throughout the country repeatedly.”

Civil asset forfeiture is a crime — if a legal one. I’ve devoted numerous columns to it, here, these past few decades. Interestingly, there’s no overt political reason for it not to stop, for opposition to it comes from both left and right — and middle.

The problem, explains left-wing Justice Sotomayor, is that this legal practice of seizing property associated with crime does not have checks and balances in American law, since, until the 1970s, it had been used circumspectly, for the most part — against pirates and such. Since then, and in great part because of the War on Drugs, it has gotten out of hand: greedy functionaries in law enforcement have grabbed property and kept it, requiring even “innocent owners” — people not directly engaging in any crime — to go through absurdly difficult legal maneuvers, expending inordinate time and far too much money to get back what’s theirs.

It’s all very corrupt, as Justice Neil Gorsuch — no left-winger, he — observes. “Clearly, there are some jurisdictions that are using civil forfeiture as funding mechanisms,” he said.

All this I glean from a terrific article by Jacob Sullum in Reason. Like many of my past columns, Sullum identifies litigation by the heroic Institute for Justice.

What strikes me now, however, is how unresponsive our governments have been. We are still dealing with this horrific practice year after year despite near universal opposition to it by citizens. Politicians could have stopped it cold years ago. 

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Why pussyfoot around this? Because politicians are not serving us. They are greedy, too. For power. They’ll even use our property for their cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


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education and schooling judiciary

Thomas & Thomas

In the Students for Fair Admissions decision, the Supreme Court rules that using race as a criterion of university admissions is unconstitutional.

Ambiguous aspects of the decision and the determination of some universities to keep using race as a criterion mean that qualified applicants may, alas, still be penalized for being the “wrong” color. Unambiguous, though, is Justice Clarence Thomas’s rebuke of the decision’s dissenters for, among other things, assuming that only racism can explain the different average outcomes of ethnic groups.

“[N]one of those statistics are capable of drawing a direct causal link between race — rather than socioeconomic status or any other factor — and individual outcomes. So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds. . . .”

Has Thomas been perusing the work of Thomas Sowell?

One of Sowell’s career-integrating insights is that statistics summarizing differences in average group outcomes are mute about the causes. 

One must investigate causally relevant facts.

Consider, for example, differences in characteristics and outcomes between subgroups of a broader ethnic group. Sole possible cause: racism? Or the fact that Asians on average perform better than whites in certain academic or economic categories. Sole possible cause: racism?

Just two of many pertinent questions that Dr. Sowell has asked as he, in his numerous books, surveyed our world’s cultures, lands, and histories.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Fifth Amendment rights general freedom property rights

Government Greed Swept in Double-Header

Geraldine Tyler lived long enough to see the U.S. Supreme Court rule against those who robbed her. She is 94.

On May 25, 2023, the Court determined in a 9-0 ruling that Hennepin County, Minnesota, is not constitutionally entitled to pocket the entire sale-price value of a condo in massive excess of the property taxes that Geraldine Tyler owed on the property when the government seized it for unpaid taxes.

Including penalties and interest, Tyler had owed about $15,000. But after selling the condo for $40,000, the county government seemed to think that $25,000 was a reasonable brokerage fee.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Tyler in the case, argued that the county violated the Takings Clause of the Constitution by taking private property for public use “without just compensation.”

The Court agreed, saying that exploiting the debt “to confiscate more property than was due” effected “a ‘classic taking in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use.’ ”

The ruling also rejects the county’s argument that Tyler somehow forfeited her constitutional rights by failing to pay her property taxes.

The same day, PLF also won another huge victory in the U.S. Supreme Court when the Court ruled that the EPA does not have limitless authority to block property owners from building on their own land if the agency chooses to designate a soggy part of the land a protected “wetland.”

Two for two. Not a bad batting average.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment education and schooling

Justice (Almost) Done

It ain’t over until the money’s in the bank. But one wrong, long fought, may soon be righted. Justice done.

Years ago, Gibson’s Bakery won a judgment of $38 million against Oberlin College because of the Ohio school’s role in harassing the bakery and defaming it as “racist” after a 2016 shoplifting incident.  

The shopkeeper of the family-donuts, racist, college bakery, Allyn Gibson, caught students trying to steal wine. They attacked him. They were black.

For whatever reasons, students on campus chugged into uproar mode, accusing the bakery of racism as if it prefers to be robbed only by persons of pallor. 

The shoplifters eventually pled guilty and acknowledged that the bakery is not racist.

The students’ irrationality was bad enough. Then Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo chimed in, working with protesters to defame the bakery. The school canceled its contract with Gibson’s and would claim in legal filings that the bakery’s “archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests.”

In 2017, the bakery sued Oberlin and won.

Oberlin has been appealing. Now it has lost in the Ohio Supreme Court, which refused to hear the appeal.

Only the U.S. Supreme Court can save Oberlin now. But according to the Legal Insurrection blog, the chances that it will even consider the case are slim.

Is $38 million the right award? Perhaps Oberlin should pay Gibson’s $50 million. Or a cool billion. 

But Oberlin deserves to be punished just as Gibson’s deserves to be compensated. 

May this finally happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment ideological culture

Pushing Past Protest

A group called Jane’s Revenge is on a rampage against organizations known to oppose abortion.

“We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures,” the manifesto declares. “Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti. From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season.”

We don’t know how Jane’s Revenge is constituted. Maybe it will turn out to be just one woman with a keyboard. Whatever its form, though, it has acolytes, persons willing to damage the property of churches, anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and other anti-abortion organizations.

Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for vandalizing the Agape Pregnancy Center in Des Moines this month. In Olympia, St. Michael Parish was spray-painted with the words “abort the church.” Dozens of similar incidents began in early May, when Wisconsin Family Action was damaged by arson and vandalism. (Family Research Center maintains a list of the attacks; Wikipedia curates a page about those attributed specifically to Jane’s Revenge.)

The Biden administration has finally made a pro forma objection to the violence being perpetrated by pro-abortion protesters. Too often, though, government officials and others have been conspicuously silent. Could it possibly be the case that they’re OK with violence as a means because they agree about abortion as an end?

This is tantamount to encouraging violence by the angry left — and not just when it comes to this particular controversial issue.

Thankfully, though there have been protests nationwide against the Supreme Court’s overthrowal, last week, of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), there has so far been no “Night of Rage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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media and media people national politics & policies

Shut Up, Spouse

“Stand down and let your better half do the job,” was the specific advice syndicated-columnist Kathleen Parker recently offered a woman, explaining that this woman’s “biggest mistake is that she thinks she’s important.”

Adding for emphasis: “She is not.”

Parker is not writing about Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, or Dr. Jill Biden. Her subject? Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Recollecting Ginni attending her writing seminar decades ago, Parker describes Ginni then as a “sweet, eager-to-learn 40-something,” who was “quite likable.”  

“But,” claimed Parker, “something has happened to the Ginni Thomas whom I knew then.”

What exactly

“Today,” we are told, “she’s entrenched with various hard-right conservative groups” and is “anti-feminist, anti-affirmative action, and, perhaps worst of all to her critics, pro-Donald Trump.”

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! . . . seems Ginni Thomas dares to hold opinions with which Parker disagrees.

Moreover, explained the columnist, Ginni “has not been idle in politics, advocating for issues that, importantly, could come before the court on which her husband serves” — as virtually any issue under the sun could. Parker connected Ginni’s political participation to calls “on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases in which his wife has been active.”

Every spouse of a Supreme Court justice has (or arguably should have) political views of his or her own. And the right — and propriety — to act on them. 

Though Parker’s whole column is rich, the cream of the irony has to be first listing Ginni Thomas as an “anti-feminist” and then suggesting she shut up and leave politics to her husband.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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