I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s telling that as of this moment, all of the top-level comments to this thread are currently gray (except for otterly&#x27;s assertion that it should be dated).<p>I think it&#x27;s worth noting that civil asset forfeiture, while controversial, isn&#x27;t necessarily evil in itself, if done with a high bar to seizure.  I think it&#x27;s fair to say that someone who makes a fortune using illegal means should have to surrender that fortune.<p>Where asset forfeiture falls down on this is that FAR too often, no illegal acts are proven before forfeiture is initiated, and substantive due process should need to be the hurdle before that happens.  This will of course lead to the unfortunate likelihood that &quot;bad people&quot; will use some of those fortunes in their legal defenses, but if &quot;innocent until proven guilty&quot; is to be our standard, and it&#x27;s a mighty good one IMHO, then so be it.  The alternative is much worse (again, IMHO), which is that those without fortunes, and hence, without the means of adequate legal representation, are simply unable to defend themselves at all except through court-appointed lawyers of potentially questionable effectiveness.<p>The trick, of course, is that the state has a hurdle before stealing goods, and they have no incentive to impose such hurdles upon themselves.  I don&#x27;t know what the fix for that is, short of being really loud and riotous, but someone else&#x27;s off-the-cuff remark the other day struck a chord to me (though not without its own potential pitfalls) -- limit attorneys general and other positions of that sort to only defense and criminal attorneys with a history of having defended the rights of citizens.<p>If we accept that the job (or at least <i>a</i> job) of the government is to defend the rights of the citizenry, then such an exclusion makes a certain amount of sense.  As it stands, the state, and its agents, have a disproportionally stacked playing field.