The Supreme Court Shows Off Its Dull Side

[WSJ_law_blog]

Well, chalk one up for restraint.

Supreme Court justices often are accused of overreaching, of legislating from the bench, of pontificating on high.

Not yesterday, at least not in the Chicago asset forfeiture case that we previewed yesterday.

The case involves whether people whose assets are impounded by police in drugs arrests should be entitled to a prompt hearing, where they can argue that their property was wrongly seized.

Critics say that owners sometimes get so tired of waiting for formal asset-forfeiture hearings, where they can stake their claim for seized property, that they sometimes merely give up the fight, allowing the government free rein to sell cars and other goods.

Anyway, the case was shaping up as an interesting battle pitting the government against individual rights, at least before the Dour Nine (with one exception) weighed in at yesterday’s oral arguments, as WSJ’s Jess Bravin recounts.

“Rather than focus on whether the Constitution’s due-process rights required hearings, the justices spent much of their time pondering procedural rules that could remove the case from their docket.”

It doesn’t get much better.

Since the plaintiffs ─ property owners who claimed their assets had been wrongly seized ─ had resolved their claims, several justices noted, the issues now were moot.

“The justices seemed to have realized that they took the case before the facts had developed enough to assess the real-world implications of imposing a hearing requirement,” Bravin reports. The 7th Circuit earlier ruled in the case that the trial judge should work with Chicago officials to fashion a workable hearing process. But the Supreme Court had waded into the case before the trial judge had implemented his remedy.

At least one justice, John Paul Stevens, appeared ready for bold action.

“If we said [the case] is moot, you’ll just get another plaintiff and bring another lawsuit,” he told the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the case. “Just let the proceedings go ahead.”