As a result of a conversation I recently had with an Assemblyman, I’ve decided to clarify my view on Asset Forfeiture. When a person is arrested on drug charges, or whatever other charges trigger these things, I don’t mind if […]
Month: May 2016
And a Third Legal System: the Laws of War
Andrew Rosenthal, in the New York Times here and here writes about the pressure to treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, [who I can’t resist calling ‘The Joker’] not as a criminal but as an ‘enemy combatant’, largely because that pesky Bill of Rights would […]
Mental Health and ‘Punishment’ versus ‘Treatment’
If you think about it, we also have two parallel prison systems, one under criminal law, the other under civil law. We worry a lot about ‘incarceration’ and the ‘mental health’ of prisoners. Yes we have too many people in […]
Asset Forfeiture
Many organizations, from Institute for Justice to Reason and Cato, have crusaded for the elimination or limiting of the practice of asset forfeiture. Property can be confiscated for crimes where one has not been found guilty. The reason is, as […]
The Parallel Structures of Criminal and Civil Law, and the Hole in the Bill of Rights
American criminal law, first on the federal level, and later, when the Supreme Court started to apply the Bill of Rights to the states in the 20th century [and at local level as well], has some restrictions on the government in […]