74
simply because Good did not receive preseizure notice and an opportunity to be heard. I therefore respectfully dissent from Part II of the Court's opinion; I also join Parts II and III of the opinion of The Chief Justice.
II
My first disagreement is with the Court's holding that the Government must give notice and a hearing before seizing any real property prior to forfeiting it. That conclusion is inconsistent with over a hundred years of our case law. We have already held that seizure for purpose of forfeiture is one of those "extraordinary situations," Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67, 82 (1972) (internal quotation marks omitted), in which the Due Process Clause does not require predeprivation notice and an opportunity to be heard. Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663, 676-680 (1974). As we have recognized, Calero-Toledo "clearly indicates that due process does not require federal [agents] to conduct a hearing before seizing items subject to forfeiture." United States v. $8,850, 461 U. S. 555, 562, n. 12 (1983); see also United States v. Von Neumann, 474 U. S. 242, 249, n. 7 (1986). Those cases reflect the commonsense notion that the property owner receives all the process that is due at the forfeiture hearing itself. See id., at 251 ("[The claimant's] right to a [timely] forfeiture proceeding . . . satisfies any due process right with respect to the [forfeited property]"); Windsor v. McVeigh, 93 U. S. 274, 279 (1876).
The distinction the Court tries to draw between our precedents and this case—the only distinction it can draw—is that real property is somehow different than personal property for due process purposes. But that distinction has never been considered constitutionally relevant in our forfeiture cases. Indeed, this Court rejected precisely the same distinction in a case in which we were presented with a due process challenge to the forfeiture of real property for back taxes:
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