 In this season of the pursuit, we have learned much about the intersection of private property rights and government action. We explored two methods government can use to seize private property, eminent domain, and civil asset forfeiture. If you listen to the entire season, you might realize that property rights in our country are not nearly as secure as we think. From where I am standing, I see the need for a lot of reform. This is the last episode of the pursuit, so I'll try to answer a question I imagine a lot of people have. What now? This is The Pursuit, a podcast about government action and individual liberty. I'm Tess Terrible. This is Dana Berliner and Scott Bullock from the Institute for Justice. If you recall, they argued the Kilo vs New London case. They spoke with me about the state of eminent domain today. The commercial real estate market is starting to come back and you're starting to hear cities and private parties saying, you know, we've got to get serious about increasing our tax base. And we've got some developers to hear that that are interested in doing that. And we've got a great plan, great idea for a project in our neighborhood. And unfortunately, we have to use eminent domain if only if necessary, only if it's a last resort. And so we at the Institute for Justice, other folks have to remain vigilant because even though enormous progress has been made, you're starting to see the groundwork being laid for this abuse to come back. So we'll be there and we'll make sure that these protections that were put into place in the wake of Kilo are there and given life and strengthen, which are definitely needed. Dana and I have done numerous eminent domain cases over the years, but she and I and the other folks here at the Institute for Justice have do work in a wide variety of constitutional issues. And we do it because we love it. We get to vindicate essential constitutional principles, ones that protect individual liberty. We give life to those guarantees. And we also get to represent real people whose rights are at stake, whose lives are at stake, whose property is on the line. To be able to do both, to be able to vindicate the principles that all of us here believe in so passionately, the principles of individual liberty and limited government and constitutional rights, but being able to do it on behalf of people like Suzette Kilo and Mike Cristofaro and the numerous other folks that we've represented for so long is really, really special. This is Suzette Kilo, the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, Kilo v. New London. I want them to remember what happened to us. You know, I used to worry that we would be forgotten. And Jeff Bennett, it came and wrote a book. And I said, oh, here we, you know, people won't forget. And then the book turned into a movie. And I think people really need to remember, you know, what happened to us. And I think another thing, too, that people need to realize that they can say no and can attempt to keep what's theirs and attempt to do the right thing. Even more prevalent than eminent domain is civil asset forfeiture. This is Durpana Sheth from the Institute for Justice. There are numerous ways in which civil forfeiture should be reformed, primarily to increase the protections afforded to property owners by offering a guaranteeing counsel, by guaranteeing the right to a prompt probable cause hearing, by re-instituting the presumption of innocence so that the government has the burden to show that the property owner is guilty before their property can be taken. And primarily it's by eliminating the profit incentive. Forfeiture proceeds should be deposited in a general or neutral fund, not given back to law enforcement or the people who have the very power to seize property and the discretion to bring civil forfeiture actions. This is Christina Sandifer. You might remember her from our first episode. She works extensively in the area of property rights. So we call private property rights the cornerstone of liberty because they're absolutely fundamental human rights and they really are a critical ingredient in freedom. So the reason why is because they're the guardian of all of their rights. So a cornerstone is something upon which everything else is built and private property rights are the foundation of all other rights. And what I mean by that is you really can't fully exercise your other constitutional or natural rights without private property rights. So for example, you can't have freedom of the press if you're not allowed to own a printing press. You can't have freedom of religion if you're not allowed to own the church where you're worshiping or if the government can come in and seize your church and everything in it if they don't like what it is that you're preaching. Really all other rights rely on property rights and our founding fathers knew that and that's why when they drafted the Constitution they refer to private property rights more than any other right. We talk about our right to own property, our right to use it. All other rights flow from that concept of private property rights. We hear life, liberty and property, the Locke inversion or life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which was something that the founding fathers of course used in the Declaration of Independence and I think it's really interesting and important that property was replaced with pursuit of happiness because I think that tells us a lot about the founding fathers concept of property rights that in order to be able to pursue the American dream, something that people even today risk their lives coming from other countries to come to the United States to be free and to be able to pursue their right to earn an honest living, to earn food and shelter for their families and to create things. You need to have property rights. You need to have ownership. You need to know that the things that you own and the things that you create are yours. The cornerstone of liberty. The thing that all our other rights are built on. The right to own yourself, your life, what you do, what you say, what you own and what defines you. Life, liberty, property. The foundation of the pursuit of happiness. This has been The Pursuit. I'm test terrible. We will be back. The pursuit is produced and hosted by me, Test Terrible. It is a project of the Cato Institute and Libertarianism.org. Music by Celophane Sam. Production assistance by Jonathan Fields and Jeff Geld. Script supervision by Trevor Burris and Carol Wood.