Suing you to the extent of having to pay back whatever your father passed on to you, at least what's left of it would be reasonable, don't you think?
Just to be absolutely clear -- it's not reasonable, and what you're suggesting is literally how North Korea handles crime.
"Oh but you know here it's different" -- you're setting a precedent which, if allowed, would mean your family members could face jail time for crimes YOU commit.
Every law, no matter how small and well-meaning, has implicit threat of prison behind it. You can't be so naïve as to believe that this enforcement action won't result in prison for some, destroyed lives for others, and because laws and enforcement are man-made, there's also a guarantee that your dragnet will punish some innocents, and let some guilty go (maybe because they can afford great lawyers and/or bribes). And of course, because this would be a very controversial measure, it would be highly politicized.
If someone doesn't comply with the court, but that would be a crime committed by the child, not the parent.
There are plenty of laws which don't have an implicit threat of prison behind it.
Here's one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/1 . Quoting Wikipedia: "This is a U.S. federal law, but only suggests voluntary customs for handling of the American flag and was never intended to be enforceable. The code uses non-binding language like "should" and "custom" throughout and does not prescribe any penalties for failure to follow the guidelines." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code
There are laws naming post offices and other objects. There are law recognizing people and bestowing honors on them. There are laws which cancel previous laws.
There are plenty of laws which have no threat of punishment.
But I'll set that objection aside.
Let's go back to CJefferson's comment, to be more concrete. "inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally."
Money (at least as CJefferson refers to) exists because of laws, and the way we think of money exists because of laws. Inheritance is a legal concept, enforced by laws. So the right to inherit millions of dollars by your definition exists because of the implicit threat of prison.
Thus, changing the law as CJefferson describes doesn't necessarily add a new threat of violence - it could change the balance of the existing threat of violence, or even reduce it.
Thus, an argument against changing the law simply because laws carry a threat of punishment is really an argument to maintain the status quo for the existing threats of violence. It is not a strong argument against changing the law, which is what I think you meant it as.
Moreover, where do you draw the line? Should all the decedents of german families who got their wealth off the back of slave labor by jews also be forced to forfeit their wealth? What about the decedents of families of plantation owners? How do you go about handling that with the institutions provided? What would they be charged with?
You're being very emotional about what seems like a pretty clear case of recovering ill-gotten gains.
If somebody sells me a television they burgled from your house, I'd consider the transaction settled once the exchange was made and we'd parted ways. You would probably disagree.
Unknowingly buying stolen property still comes with a risk that if LE ever find it, they can take it away from you without compensating you.
I had my TV stolen and sold to a pawn shop. Detectives found it at local pawn shop and they recovered it for me. These laws exist so that when one is engaged in business, they have to do reasonable due diligence that they are not dealing with stolen or illegal goods.
FYI this does happen for companies. It's not that wild. Businesses like Lloyds of London and Greene King are paying slavery reparations today despite the fact that no one in the company had anything directly to do with that part of the business. I guess if you had stock that had been passed down through generations you would indirectly lose out on some money if the share price fell as a result.
I'm not a libertarian myself, but I miss the libertarianism of Silicon Valley and HN. They are still around, but there's a lot more progressives around and there is a very real authoritarian and violent strain that runs through that movement.
Actual facts show that at this moment in time in the U.S. it's white supremacists and related extreme-right ideologies which are producing most domestic terrorism (i.e. actual violence).
https://www.csis.org/analysis/war-comes-home-evolution-domes...
In addition to the link I shared, both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have recently reported white-supremacist aligned groups as the major source of violent attacks (aka domestic terrorism) within the U.S. in recent years.
https://raskin.house.gov/media/press-releases/subcommittee-c...
https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/confronting-white-suprema...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/homeland-secu...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/homeland-white-supremacy-lethal-t...
Are people disputing these facts? Or are merely displeased?
Factual information is nonpartisan.
And yes, punishing a family member for a crime perpetrated by another is, by definition, collective punishment.
This is problematic from a variety of practical angles, though, not just mathematical ones. It seems like something the forensic accounting lobby would salivate over.
Should I be forced to defend a lawsuit because my great^6 grandfather owned slaves? (As far as I know, none did.) That’s more abhorrent than legally dumping chemicals that today’s common sense says should have been done differently.
My father had his own earning, creating, and saving abilities.
The only think which could in anyway get close to legality would be to:
- Legally hold a case against whoever did it and win it. (Can even legally have a case against a dead person?) This requires thinks to have been illegal when done.
- Requiring that (likely dead) person to pay a fine based on existing law.
- Arguing that whoever accepted an inheritance did inherit the fine, too.
But as far as I know every point of this list has many legally questionable aspects.
But what you MUST NOT do under any circumstances in a state of law is to not base judgement on law but arbitrary "I feel like this should be done" arguments. This is also why it's of upmost importance to fast adapt laws make them general instead of specific and not put any loop holes in them. Because then you can judge people to some degree even if they do something bad even if that specific think wasn't explicitly forbidden. (E.g. based on a generic law which makes any form of causing environmental damage in a context where it's reasonable to assume it the person should have been aware illegal. Sure you need some threshold, too. Else driving your care is illegal.)
I don't see how you could have a criminal trail against a dead person in the US, without violating the sixth amendment. It would be impossible to inform the deceased of the charges, etc.
Having a period after death for the government to bring charges against the estate seems reasonable. We already have this, but I could see a reasonable person arguing to make it a longer period.
I think it's unreasonable for the same reason getting rid of all statutes of limitations would be unreasonable. At some point, you have to let people stop looking over their shoulder. Society doesn't work very well when you incentivize people to dig up century old dirt on their enemies.