Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Property

Legal Studies

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Prosecuting Civil Asset Forfeiture On Contingency Fees: Looking For Profit In All The Wrong Places, Louis S. Rulli Jan 2021

Prosecuting Civil Asset Forfeiture On Contingency Fees: Looking For Profit In All The Wrong Places, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

Civil asset forfeiture has strayed far from its intended purpose. Designed to give law enforcement powerful tools to combat maritime offenses and criminal enterprises, forfeiture laws are now used to prey upon innocent motorists and lawful homeowners who are never charged with crimes. Their only sins are that they are carrying legal tender while driving on busy highways or providing shelter in their homes to adult children and grandchildren who allegedly sold small amounts of low-level drugs. Civil forfeiture abuses are commonplace throughout the country with some police even armed with legal waivers for property owners to sign on the …


Abuse Of Property Right Without Political Foundations: A Response To Katz, Mitchell N. Berman Aug 2014

Abuse Of Property Right Without Political Foundations: A Response To Katz, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

In an article recently published in the Yale Law Journal, Larissa Katz defends a heterodox principle of abuse of property right pursuant to which an owner abuses her rights with respect to a thing she owns if she makes an otherwise permitted decision about how to use that thing just in order to harm others, either out of spite, or for leverage. Katz grounds that principle in a novel theory of the political foundations of the institution of property ownership. This essay argues that Katz’s political theory is implausible, but that this should not doom her preferred principle of …