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Opinion of Stevens, J.
rule of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299 (1932); and (4) in all events, the two cases should be deemed to constitute a single proceeding for double jeopardy purposes. Because the Court addresses only the first of these arguments, I shall begin by explaining why both reason and precedent support the conclusion that the taking of respondent's home was unmistakably punitive in character. I shall then comment on the other three arguments.
I
In recent years, both Congress and the state legislatures have armed their law enforcement authorities with new powers to forfeit property that vastly exceed their traditional tools.2 In response, this Court has reaffirmed the funda-2 Justice Thomas has expressed his concern about both the unusual scope and the novelty of the very statute used to carry out the forfeiture in these cases: "I am disturbed by the breadth of new civil forfeiture statutes such as 21 U. S. C. § 881(a)(7), which subjects to forfeiture all real property that is used, or intended to be used, in the commission, or even the facilitation, of a federal drug offense. As Justice O'Connor points out, . . . since the Civil War we have upheld statutes allowing for the civil forfeiture of real property. A strong argument can be made, however, that § 881(a)(7) is so broad that it differs not only in degree, but in kind, from its historical antecedents. . . . Indeed, it is unclear whether the central theory behind in rem forfeiture, the fiction 'that the thing is primarily considered the offender,' J. W. Goldsmith, Jr.-Grant Co. v. United States, 254 U. S. 505, 511 (1921), can fully justify the immense scope of § 881(a)(7). Under this provision, 'large tracts of land [and any improvements thereon] which have no connection with crime other than being the location where a drug transaction occurred,' Brief for Respondents 20, are subject to forfeiture. It is difficult to see how such real property is necessarily in any sense 'guilty' of an offense, as could reasonably be argued of, for example, the distillery in Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, 96 U. S. 395 (1878), or the pirate vessel in Harmony v. United States, 2 How. 210 (1844). Given that current practice under § 881(a)(7) appears to be far removed from the legal fiction upon which the civil forfeiture doctrine is based, it may be necessary—in an appropriate case—to reevaluate our generally deferential approach to legislative judgments in this area of civil forfeiture." United
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