Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/16-122_1b7d.pdf
Page Number: 5

Cite as:  580 U. S. ____ (2017) 

5 

Statement of THOMAS, J. 

tion  presumably  would  require  the  Court  to  align  its  dis-
tinct  doctrine  governing  civil  forfeiture  with  its  doctrines
governing  other  forms  of  punitive  state  action  and  prop- 
erty  deprivation.  See  Bennis,  supra,  at  454  (THOMAS, J., 
concurring) (“One unaware of the history of forfeiture laws 
and  200  years  of  this  Court’s  precedent  regarding  such
laws might well assume that such a scheme is lawless—a
violation of due process”).  I am skeptical that this histori-
cal  practice  is  capable  of  sustaining,  as  a  constitutional 
matter, the contours of modern practice, for two reasons. 

First,  historical  forfeiture  laws  were  narrower  in  most 
respects  than  modern  ones.  Cf.  James  Daniel  Good,  510 
U. S., at 85 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting 
in  part)  (noting  that  “ambitious  modern  statutes  and 
prosecutorial  practices  have  all  but  detached  themselves 
from the ancient notion of civil forfeiture”).  Most obviously,
they  were  limited  to  a  few  specific  subject  matters,  such
as  customs  and  piracy.    Proceeding  in rem  in  those  cases 
was often justified by necessity, because the party respon-
sible  for  the  crime  was  frequently  located  overseas  and 
thus  beyond  the  personal  jurisdiction  of  United  States 
courts.  See Herpel, Toward a Constitutional Kleptocracy:
Civil Forfeiture in America, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 1910, 1918– 
1920  (1998);  see  also  id.,  at  1925–1926  (arguing  that
founding-era  precedents  do  not  support  the  use  of  forfei-
ture  against  purely  domestic  offenses  where  the  owner  is 
plainly  within  the  personal  jurisdiction  of  both  state  and 
federal  courts).  These  laws  were  also  narrower  with  re-
spect  to  the  type  of  property  they  encompassed.    For  ex-
ample, they typically covered only the instrumentalities of 
the crime (such as the vessel used to transport the goods),
not the derivative proceeds of the crime (such as property
purchased  with  money  from  the  sale  of  the  illegal  goods). 
See  Rumson,  supra,  at  121–122,  125  (plurality  opinion)
(Forfeiture of criminal proceeds is a modern innovation). 

Second, it is unclear whether courts historically permit-