Comment by jmyeet
19 hours ago
The real lesson here is you can use mental gymnastics to interpret the constitution any way you want. As such, judges are inherently political actors.
Civil asset forfeiture should be a direct and obvious breach of the Fourth Amendment, specificially "unreasonable search and seizure" but no, the law has contorted civil asset forfeiture to be OK because money is property and property has no constitutional rights.
The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property. The police as an institution began as slave catchers (ie returning slaves, being "property", to their owners). Even the FBI has its origin in the Mann Act [1], also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. Basically, it was anti-misagenation.
More generally, if you look at any important course case, mainly Supreme Court precedents, just look at a decision with the lens of how the wealthy will benefit and you'll be able to prodict the outcome with at least a 90% accuracy.
The police are muscle that applies violence to advance the interests of the state. They only protect the wealthy insofar as that serves the interest of the state. The interests of the wealthy are generally fairly aligned with the state for various reasons. There is a subtle but important distinction between that and "serving the rich".
> They only protect the wealthy insofar as that serves the interest of the state.
In a capitalist society, that's tautological. The interests of the wealthy are the interests of the state.
>The police exist to protect the wealthy and their property.
As a thought experiment, what would happen if they existed to protect the inverse segment and their property?
The inverse would be to use the monopoly on violence to punish those who wish to use property for their self-interest at the expense of the common good.
Basically imagine police throwing in jail people who declare a plot of land as belonging to them, or someone who has seized the means of production and is now pocketing all the profits.
So basically bandit kings who declare greed is the ultimate sin because it denies them their "rightful" earnings?
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