[icambron]

What’s weird is that American higher courts are often quite good at eviscerating this kind of nonsense, usually by pointing out that such a “workaround” would make the constitutional amendment toothless, and it was not meant to be toothless, so the workaround is bunk.

That civil asset forfeiture has survived is simply because the courts are gutless about it.

[rland]

Huh?

There is a very long and plainly wrong string of Supreme Court decisions which stretches all the way back to the nation's founding. The courts are very good at precisely the opposite thing that you're describing.

I think most people kind of assume that the courts are this sort of shining beacon of enlightened liberal thought: they occasionally seem to have "duds" -- but those are intelligent and well reasoned duds. They're interpreting the constitution in a way some don't like, sure, but still upholding it nonetheless, right?

I mean, this thread here about civil asset forfeiture is a great example. If you ask any non-lawyer brained person whether it's wrong, they'll say, yeah, of course it's illegal for the government to just steal your shit. Why is this even a question?

Oh, but no, you see, the courts have wisely decided, using an argument that you might hear from a 5-year-old ("actually, this piece of property is actually a mystical ghost that we can treat as a people!"), that stealing your shit is, in fact, legal.

I really encourage anyone curious about this powerful and unaccountable institution to read some of the shittier Supreme Court decisions. They are often, simply put, stupid. Like, a regular non-lawyer person can read them and handily "eviscerate" their arguments.

[jjeaff]

My favorite, idiotic decision from a higher court this year was the judge that argued in her opinion that the federal government's legal authority to protect the public from infectious disease did not extend to mask requirements because the law says they can require sanitation, but wearing a mask doesn't "sanitize" anything.

Ignoring the fact that the point of a mask is to "sanitize" the germ filled air coming out of or into your mouth, the same law says "or other measures" as needed to protect the public.

It was such poor logic, especially considering the context of the original law at the time (fighting tuberculosis) and the potentially damaging aftermath of such a precedent (not hard to imagine a future, more deadly virus that some politicians decides is a political inconvenience).