Cite as: 510 U. S. 43 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
This is apparent by comparison to Calero-Toledo, where the Government's interest in immediate seizure of a yacht subject to civil forfeiture justified dispensing with the usual requirement of prior notice and hearing. Two essential considerations informed our ruling in that case: First, immediate seizure was necessary to establish the court's jurisdiction over the property, 416 U. S., at 679, and second, the yacht might have disappeared had the Government given advance warning of the forfeiture action, ibid. See also United States v. Von Neumann, 474 U. S. 242, 251 (1986) (no pre-seizure hearing is required when customs officials seize an automobile at the border). Neither of these factors is present when the target of forfeiture is real property.
Because real property cannot abscond, the court's jurisdiction can be preserved without prior seizure. It is true that seizure of the res has long been considered a prerequisite to the initiation of in rem forfeiture proceedings. See Republic Nat. Bank of Miami v. United States, 506 U. S. 80, 84 (1992); United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U. S. 354, 363 (1984). This rule had its origins in the Court's early admiralty cases, which involved the forfeiture of vessels and other movable personal property. See Taylor v. Carryl, 20 How. 583, 599 (1858); The Brig Ann, 9 Cranch 289 (1815); Keene v. United States, 5 Cranch 304, 310 (1809). Justice Story, writing for the Court in The Brig Ann, explained the justification for the rule as one of fixing and preserving jurisdiction: "[B]efore judicial cognizance can attach upon a forfeiture in rem, . . . there must be a seizure; for until seizure it is impossible to ascertain what is the competent forum." 9 Cranch, at 291. But when the res is real property, rather than personal goods, the appropriate judicial forum may be determined without actual seizure.
As The Brig Ann held, all that is necessary "[i]n order to institute and perfect proceedings in rem, [is] that the thing should be actually or constructively within the reach of the Court." Ibid. And as we noted last Term, "[f]airly read,
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