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524US2

Unit: $U89

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342

UNITED STATES v. BAJAKAJIAN

Opinion of the Court

fendant’s contention that this provision was “penal,” stating
instead that it was “fully as remedial in its character, de-
signed as plainly to secure [the] rights [of the Government],
as are the statutes rendering importers liable to duties.”
13
Wall., at 546. The Court reasoned:

“When foreign merchandise, subject to duties, is im-
ported into the country, the act of importation imposes
on the importer the obligation to pay the legal charges.
Besides this the goods themselves, if the duties be not
paid, are subject to seizure . . . . Every act, therefore,
which interferes with the right of the government to
seize and appropriate the property which has been for-
feited to it . . . is a wrong to property rights, and is a ﬁt
Ibid.
subject for indemnity.”

Signiﬁcantly, the fact that the forfeiture was a multiple of
the value of the goods did not alter the Court’s conclusion:

“The act of abstracting goods illegally imported, re-
ceiving, concealing, or buying them, interposes difﬁcul-
ties in the way of a government seizure, and impairs,
It is,
therefore, the value of the government right.
then, hardly accurate to say that the only loss the gov-
ernment can sustain from concealing the goods liable to
seizure is their single value . . . . Double the value may
Id., at 546–547.
not be more than complete indemnity.”

The early monetary forfeitures, therefore, were considered
not as punishment for an offense, but rather as serving the
remedial purpose of reimbursing the Government for the
losses accruing from the evasion of customs duties.17 They

17 In each of the statutes from the early Congresses cited by the dissent,
the activities giving rise to the monetary forfeitures, if undetected, were
likely to cause the Government losses in customs revenue. The forfeiture
imposed by the Acts of Aug. 4, 1790, and Mar. 2, 1799, was not simply for
“transferring goods from one ship to another,” post, at 346, but rather for
doing so “before such ship . . . shall come to the proper place for the
discharge of her cargo . . . and be there duly authorized by the proper
ofﬁcer or ofﬁcers of the customs to unlade” the goods, see 1 Stat. 157,