[pmyteh]

It's common in admiralty law everywhere. If you have a ship that hasn't paid its docking fees, what can you do? The owner is an ocean away and won't come to court even if you find a way to inform them. If you let the ship sail the port will never be paid. It can be arrested and, if necessary, auctioned to pay the debt. But you can't do that without a court order. So there is an in rem action against the ship itself. It makes perfect sense in that context (and in the one that other commentators have mentioned, which is unaccompanied packages of contraband). Also prize and salvage actions, which are also admiralty proceedings.

The difficulty comes when you stretch the concept like with civil forfeiture. It's not even necessary: England and Wales has the Proceeds of Crime Act to allow seizure and forfeiture of criminal property and all the cases under that are ordinary in personam actions between the state and the putative criminal.

[account42]

> If you have a ship that hasn't paid its docking fees, what can you do?

You can sue the owner. If they don't show up that doesn't mean that they automatically win the case - if anything, it's the opposite. If you can't identify the owner you can make the case against John Doe and still have a state appointed defender represent the owner's rights. You can get a court-ordered injunction to detain the ship until the case is resolved.

I don't see why you need to invent a new legal concept here at all - other that it makes things easier for the state to seize things when they don't need to worry about such pesky things as rights.

[gwright]

Hmm. I've been wondering why all the Russian yachts have been "arrested" lately in the news as opposed to "seized", for example. It sounded very strange to me as I thought that "arrested" only applied to people.

Your use in this comment make me think that usage is tied to this legal concept of in rem.