Obama never showed any desire to curtail executive powers. In fact, he was championing exactly the opposite approach - that executive has the power to produce new regulatory legislation and ignore existing legislation they don't like, as soon as they perceive Congress does not do what they want it to do. No wonder Obama did nothing for civil forfeiture reform - that would be the exact opposite of his policy of infinite executive powers. His administration was not just ignoring forfeiture abuse - it was actively encouraging it, e.g. by means of infamous "equitable sharing" program, that allows the law enforcement to directly profit from seized property: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-11/obamas-do...
Saying forfeiture abuse proliferated "even under Obama" is like saying even under Rod Blagojevich corruption proliferated in Illinois. Not exactly a surprise.
You would think a professor in Constitutional Law would be eager to plug a whole that the police were taking advantage of, namely suing the money instead of suing the person. Yet all there was was deafening silence. So disappointing when people don't see things like this.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1] presents a problem for anyone seeking to rectify the problem of an organization having too much power. In order to fix the problem, you first need power, which means that you need to create the institutional structures needed to secure that power, which means you have just exacerbated the problem. If you then actually follow-through with your original goal, nobody will listen to you, because you have (by definition) removed your power. More pithily, "Organizations whose top priority is not the continued existence of the organization are replaced by organizations whose top priority is."
The only way to fix an organization that's outgrown its social purpose is for that organization to fail, outright, and then have its functions subsumed by other entities outside of the organization that can pick up the pieces. Sometimes the failure comes from internal dysfunction, sometimes it comes from external competition, but most of the time it's a mix of both, as internal dysfunction drives away competent insiders who then form the locus of external resistance.
It wasn't that big of an issue until after the recession (i.e., during his second term), so it simply wasn't on his radar while he dealt with more pressing issues.
Moreover, civil forfeiture is allowed under federal law under very broad terms. It took quite a bit of time after it became an issue to draft a policy that would allow it to continue but end the excesses. Obama couldn't simply stop enforcing the law because the GOP and various state/local law enforcement agencies were prepared to sue in court to keep the gravy train going, and such a lawsuit would have kept the practice fully legal until long after his second term ended.
Indeed, Congress could have ended civil forfeiture immediately but simply eliminating the law allowing for it. But GOP members of Congress blocked every such attempt.
I don't remember any serious effort at ending civil forfeiture while Democrats held majority in both House and Senate. Could you provide the link?
I think both parties have very little interest in ending civil forfeiture currently, and the executive has even less as it's reducing their power. Placing it on the GOP only is just wrong - they both share the blame on this.
> Obama couldn't simply stop enforcing the law because the GOP and various state/local law enforcement agencies were prepared to sue
That didn't stop him from discretionary stopping to enforce other laws he didn't like. Surely, they could sue, but he has the resources of the whole Federal Government, and as we've seen recently, single injunction from a friendly federal judge (Obama must have had at least one?) could stop any regulation nationwide. If he really wanted it, he could organize it so that the practice would be stopped at least until it propagates through the courts up to SCOTUS (probably several years) and he surely could stop any federal participation in the practice, and issue guidelines severely deprecating the practice. And of course one shouldn't underestimate the power of the President, especially one like Obama, just plain speaking on the matter publicly. Obama did so with many matters. On the matter of civil forfeiture, he did the exact opposite. I see no other explanation for this but his complete approval of the practice.
This - from 2015 - seems to pre-date my link from 2016 that says equitable sharing was reinstated. So he maybe temporarily plugged the hole but then took the plug out. Well, technically Lynch did, but we don't assume she'd do it over Obama's disagreement.
He did what he had the power to do. Getting rid of the whole hole would have required Congress to cooperate, which was a tall order when one party vowed that it was its mission to guarantee his failure.
Saying forfeiture abuse proliferated "even under Obama" is like saying even under Rod Blagojevich corruption proliferated in Illinois. Not exactly a surprise.