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Supreme Court curbs power of government to impose heavy fines and seize property
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled to drastically curb the powers that states and cities have to levy fines and seize property, marking the first time the court has applied the Constitution's ban on excessive fines at the state level.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who returned to the court for the first time in almost two months after undergoing surgery for lung cancer, wrote the majority opinion in the case involving an Indiana man who had his Land Rover seized after he was arrested for selling $385 of heroin.
"Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties," Ginsburg wrote. "They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. They can also be employed, not in service of penal purposes, but as a source of revenue."
Also at National Review, SCOTUSblog, and NPR.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:56AM (2 children)
The law is for the rich.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 21 2019, @12:52PM
Law is equal for everybody.
Not everybody is equal for the law.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday February 21 2019, @07:03PM
...the law is for whoever it is written to apply to. Which, given how corrupt our legislators are, can be a first order problem. One of the most obvious places we see this is in tax law.
However, law enforcement, lawyers and courts are all too often also the tools of the rich, which tends to make who the law was written for "for" moot.
The end result is money trickles upwards, the middle class pays the taxes, and the poor / disenfranchised bottom-most class are created and maintained as a very effective spur to terrify the middle class into perpetrating the system.
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Schrödinger's smiley: :):