; Sense of Congress (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) The Constitution authorizes and obligates each branch of the Federal Government to protect individual rights. (2) Congress is specifically authorized by the Fourteenth Amendment to provide remedies for States' violations of individual rights secured by the Constitution. (3) The Constitution secures the rights of individuals whom the Government seeks to punish for violating its laws. (4) The Government's use of in rem proceedings to forfeit property to punish legal violations without affording property owners the rights of criminal defendants plainly violates their constitutionally secured rights. (5) The Government's use of a legal tool at the time of the founding does not preclude its being incompatible with constitutionally secured rights. (6) The long-term failure of Congress, presidents, and the judiciary to recognize the illegitimacy of the Government's civil forfeiture practices does not divest them of the authority to do so. (7) The Government cannot lawfully jettison the rights of the accused for the sake of convenience and profit. (8) The early use of civil forfeiture in the United States was limited to admiralty and revenue contexts, in which the existence of a legal violation and the identity of the property used to effect it were often self-evident, and the owner of the property to be seized was often unobtainable. (9) Although the limitations on early civil forfeiture practices do not prevent those practices from being constitutionally infirm, they do materially distinguish the early practices from modern civil forfeiture. (10) The modern use of civil forfeiture by States is not limited to admiralty or revenue contexts, its reach extends far beyond property used to commit an offense, and it is used often to supplement, rather than recover, the Government's revenues. (11) Civil forfeiture statutes and precedents incorporate certain protections for property owners that, although limited, erode the nature of the proceedings as truly in