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Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Keynote Speaker: Don Graves, Deputy Assistant To President Obama And Counselor To Vice President Biden: January 24, 2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Keynote Speaker: Don Graves, Deputy Assistant To President Obama And Counselor To Vice President Biden: January 24, 2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
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Seizing Family Homes From The Innocent: Can The Eighth Amendment Protect Minorities And The Poor From Excessive Punishment In Civil Forfeiture?, Louis S. Rulli
Seizing Family Homes From The Innocent: Can The Eighth Amendment Protect Minorities And The Poor From Excessive Punishment In Civil Forfeiture?, Louis S. Rulli
All Faculty Scholarship
Civil forfeiture laws permit the government to seize and forfeit private property that has allegedly facilitated a crime without ever charging the owner with any criminal offense. The government extracts payment in kind—property—and gives nothing to the owner in return, based upon a legal fiction that the property has done wrong. As such, the government’s taking of property through civil forfeiture is punitive in nature and constrained by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, which is intended to curb abusive punishments.
The Supreme Court’s failure to announce a definitive test for determining the constitutional excessiveness of civil forfeiture takings under …