Yesterday I went to the Supreme Court to watch the argument in Alvarez v. Smith, a case about civil forfeiture in which Cato filed an amicus brief. 

Civil forfeiture, the practice in which the police seize cars, money and other kinds of property that they say has some connection to crime, can raise various of legal and policy issues — from property rights to due process.  The question in Alvarez is the basic one of whether people seeking to get their property back are entitled to a prompt hearing before a judge. 

Illinois’ forfeiture law allows the State to wait as long as six months before having to prove the legitimacy of the seizure, which proceeding may then be delayed indefinitely for “good cause.” The six plaintiffs in Alvarez — three of whom were never charged with a crime — had their cars or money seized without a warrant for months or years without any judicial hearing, and sued the state and city authorities for violating their rights to due process. The Seventh Circuit found the Illinois law to be unconstitutional because of the delay between the seizure and the forfeiture proceeding and ruled that the plaintiffs must be afforded an informal hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to detain the property. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case at the request of the Cook County State Attorney.

Cato’s brief, joined by the Goldwater Institute and Reason Foundation, supports the individuals whose property was seized. Written by David B. Smith, who previously supervised all forfeiture litigation for the Department of Justice and is now the nation’s leading authority on civil and criminal forfeiture, the brief makes three arguments: 1) Because the Illinois law, unlike the federal Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, is stacked in favor of law enforcement agencies and lacks protections for innocent property owners, the Court should apply the due process analysis from Mathews v. Eldridge, rather than the more lenient test the State proposes; 2) What has become known as a Krimstock hearing has proven to be an effective and not overly burdensome means of preventing government delay and a meaningful opportunity to contest seizure; and 3) the State’s comparison of the time limits in CAFRA with those in its own law is misleading.

Unfortunately, though some justices appeared at argument inclined to rule that at least some prompt process was due — many other states require that the police quickly come before a judge to make a showing equivalent to the one necessary to get a search warrant — several seemed to want to avoid the due process question for another day because Alvarez was procedurally flawed, so to speak.  That is, Justice Scalia pointed that none of the six plaintiffs have a live claim any more – three have had their cars returned, two defaulted on their claims, and the State reached agreement with one – so the case was “moot.”  And Justice Stevens noted that the appellate court left it to the trial court to determine the details of the hearing to which the plaintiffs were entitled.  (Of course, if the latter “problem” ends up being the key to the case, the Court will simply dismiss the appeal and let the Seventh Circuit’s ruling stand, which is good news — but only for people in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.)

For more on the case, see George Mason law professor and Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin’s oped, and his related blog post at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Due Process Case to be Decided on Procedural Grounds is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

One year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller. The decision affirmed the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms and invalidated the District of Columbia’s draconian gun control regime.

The case generated a storm of media attention. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief, one of nearly four dozen in the case.

The Cato Institute held a forum for Brian Doherty’s book chronicling this victory for liberty, Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment. The Heller case also figured prominently in Cato multimedia from Robert A. Levy and Clark Neily.

Heller did not settle all of the questions related to the right to keep and bear arms. The incorporation of the Second Amendment against state bans and regulations is currently being litigated across the country. A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states. The Seventh Circuit and Second Circuit disagreed. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit panel that declined to incorporate the Second Amendment, and Roger Pilon notes that this may play into her confirmation hearings. The circuit split on incorporation sets the stage for a further appeal to the Supreme Court, and Alan Gura and the National Rifle Association have both filed petitions for a writ of certiorari. Robert A. Levy discusses this in his recent Cato podcast.

It will be interesting to see what the next year brings for the Second Amendment.

One Year After Heller is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

You could call it the end of an error.  David Souter, the “stealth justice” who George H. W. Bush nominated mainly to avoid a confirmation battle and who so disappointed conservatives, is finally free to leave a city he never took to and return to his native New Hampshire. 

Little more can be said about Justice Souter. He has always been inscrutable, at first leaning right, shifting toward the middle in the landmark 1992 cases of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (abortion) and Lee v. Weisman (prayer at high school graduation), and ending up at the left end of the Court alongside Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer — all the while employing an unpredictable jurisprudential method.  And he has always been reclusive, refusing reporters’ and scholars’ interview requests and being the biggest opponent of video cameras inside the Court.  Perhaps most memorably, Souter gained notoriety after his vote in Kelo v. New London (allowing the taking of a private home for the benefit of a developer) spurred property rights activists to petition for the use of eminent domain to turn his farm into the “Lost Liberty Hotel.”

Speculation now turns to possible replacements, and what President Obama will do with his first chance to fill a seat on the high court.  Will he risk a big political battle on this issue so early in his term, or will he appoint someone more confirmable but less pleasing to his base? 

He is under great pressure to appoint a woman, and the three leading female candidates are new Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood.  Kagan would be an almost-certain pick a year from now, but having been just confirmed to be the so-called Tenth Justice, she might be seen as too green for elevation.  Sotomayor — because she is Hispanic and despite a mixed judicial record — was the odds-on favorite until the Court took up the employment discrimination case of Ricci v. DeStefano (argued just last week), an appeal of a bizarre opinion Sotomayor joined that denied the claims of firefighters who had been passed over for promotion because of their race.  That leaves Wood, a renowned authority on antitrust, international trade, and federal civil procedure, whose age (58) suggests that this is likely the last vacancy for which she will be considered.  Wood offers a seriousness of purpose and no ideological ax to grind, and is thus the best nominee supporters of constitutionalism and the rule of law can hope for at this time.  (Full disclosure: I took two classes from Judge Wood in law school.)

Who Will Replace Justice Souter? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog