September 15, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
Politicians do plenty of bad economic policy.
But when do they cross the line to immoral policy?
Hard-core libertarians will argue that just about everything the government does is immoral. I agree with them in many cases because I think it if fundamentally wrong to make life harder for people, especially those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
But I don’t think any of my lefty friends will agree with me that high taxes, excessive red tape, crummy government schools, wasteful spending, or bad monetary policy are immoral.
But they might agree that civil asset forfeiture is morally wrong.
Sometimes known as “policing for profit,” this occurs when cops can confiscate and keep your property, merely because they think it may have been connected with criminal activity.
Even if the connection is trivial. Even if a person is never convicted of wrongdoing!
Here are some of the words I’ve used to describe this practice:
In a column for Reason, C.J. Ciaramella shares another grotesque example of asset forfeiture, but one that hopefully will be overturned if the Supreme Court does its job correctly.
Here are some excerpts.
Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2012 when state troopers searched his plane before takeoff and discovered that a passenger was attempting to bring several cases of beer to a “dry” village where alcohol is prohibited. …But the state wasn’t through with Jouppi. For the past 13 years, prosecutors have sought to seize his Cessna U206D through asset forfeiture, a process which allows police and prosecutors to seize property connected to criminal activity. …the Alaska Supreme Court ruled this April that the forfeiture of Jouppi’s plane was not excessive. …
The Institute for Justice argues in its petition that this interpretation flies in the face of the historical understanding of the Excessive Fines Clause…
“This case isn’t just about me or my airplane anymore,” Jouppi said in an Institute for Justice press release. “I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve been fighting this for over a decade because I see it as my duty to ensure that the Bill of Rights actually means something in protecting against government overreach.”
In my “Hopes and Fears” column for 2023, i speculated that Supreme Court might rule against asset forfeiture.
The practice has been narrowed, which is good news. Hopefully this case will give the Justices an opportunity to conclusively rule that governments no longer can engage in “policing for profit.”
P.S. Click here for a clever example of anti-forfeiture humor.
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