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Non-paywalled press release from the Institute for Justice, who worked on this case as part of their mission to fight civil forfeiture: https://ij.org/press-rel

Non-paywalled press release from the Institute for Justice, who worked on this case as part of their mission to fight civil forfeiture: https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimously-that-states-cannot-impose-excessive-fines/ https://ij.org/press-release/u-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimo...

chapium 8y ago
"Ruling Requires Cities and States—Not Just the Federal Government— To Abide by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause" Wow, this is pretty big. They just extended constitutional protection of this clause to lower levels of government.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- duxup 8y ago
  It seems to be a pattern where protections aren't extended until a state or some government gets silly and the courts just decide that it is absurd to not have the same protection at that level and extends it.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    Yeah, that's an issue with how the US justice system works, and a natural tradeoff from the other properties it has. The legal system works off of precedent and cannot write law, so there's no binding opinion until and unless it comes up in a legal case. Also, you have to be harmed by a law in order to have standing to challenge it. So as long as people aren't getting harmed by the lack of an "obvious" legal conclusion, the courts will basically just let it sit there until someone comes and challenges it, whereupon the "yeah, that's absurd, we're going to give a unanimous Supreme Court decision on this" comes into effect. Sometimes it gets into a weird dynamic where the lower court knows that the Supreme Court would overturn their decision, but there isn't precedent, so they deliberately make a ruling that they expect the Supreme Court to review (and overturn) on appeal.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Yeah, that's interesting. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly applies to states; less so to cities/towns. Seems like SCOTUS is coming solidly down on the "of course they meant any level of government, folks".
  - scarface74 8y ago
    If it applies to the state, it automatically applies to towns. The constitution only sees two legal entities - the federal government and the state.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  For anyone who wants to read/learn more - the concept here is called "incorporation" - as in, the specified right is "incorporated against the states" The 14th amendment made this possible, but until the supreme court actually rules on a given right, there's no case law to compel states to treat the right that way. Another relatively recent example of this is McDonald v Chicago that incorporated the 2nd amendment against the states.
pdq 8y ago
To those that want to support the Institute for Justice, they are a 501(c)3 non-profit accepting donations [1]. It's my favorite charity, whose missions include protection of private property, economic liberty, and the first amendment; and their results speak for themselves. [1] https://ij.org/about-us https://ij.org/about-us

chapium 8y ago

"Ruling Requires Cities and States—Not Just the Federal Government— To Abide by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause" Wow, this is pretty big. They just extended constitutional protection of this clause to lower levels of government.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
duxup 8y ago
It seems to be a pattern where protections aren't extended until a state or some government gets silly and the courts just decide that it is absurd to not have the same protection at that level and extends it.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Yeah, that's an issue with how the US justice system works, and a natural tradeoff from the other properties it has. The legal system works off of precedent and cannot write law, so there's no binding opinion until and unless it comes up in a legal case. Also, you have to be harmed by a law in order to have standing to challenge it. So as long as people aren't getting harmed by the lack of an "obvious" legal conclusion, the courts will basically just let it sit there until someone comes and challenges it, whereupon the "yeah, that's absurd, we're going to give a unanimous Supreme Court decision on this" comes into effect. Sometimes it gets into a weird dynamic where the lower court knows that the Supreme Court would overturn their decision, but there isn't precedent, so they deliberately make a ruling that they expect the Supreme Court to review (and overturn) on appeal.
ceejayoz 8y ago
Yeah, that's interesting. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly applies to states; less so to cities/towns. Seems like SCOTUS is coming solidly down on the "of course they meant any level of government, folks".
- scarface74 8y ago
  If it applies to the state, it automatically applies to towns. The constitution only sees two legal entities - the federal government and the state.
lostapathy 8y ago
For anyone who wants to read/learn more - the concept here is called "incorporation" - as in, the specified right is "incorporated against the states" The 14th amendment made this possible, but until the supreme court actually rules on a given right, there's no case law to compel states to treat the right that way. Another relatively recent example of this is McDonald v Chicago that incorporated the 2nd amendment against the states.

pdq 8y ago

To those that want to support the Institute for Justice, they are a 501(c)3 non-profit accepting donations [1]. It's my favorite charity, whose missions include protection of private property, economic liberty, and the first amendment; and their results speak for themselves. [1] https://ij.org/about-us https://ij.org/about-us