Duncan Levin’s Yale Journal on Regulation (Notice & Comment) piece, When Money Becomes Punishment, analyzes the Supreme Court’s January 2026 decision in Ellingburg v. United States and its implications for modern criminal enforcement. Mr. Levin explains that the Court’s core move is simple but consequential: restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act is not merely “compensatory” bookkeeping—it is criminal punishment for constitutional purposes, because it is imposed at sentencing, triggered by conviction, enforced by the government, and backed by incarceration for noncompliance.
From that premise, Mr. Levin situates Ellingburg within a broader reality that many defendants experience long before trial: restraint and seizure of property at the outset of investigations, the use of financial leverage to drive outcomes, and the way monetary sanctions can function as punishment even when labeled civil, administrative, or “in rem.” The piece connects Ellingburg to the Court’s forfeiture jurisprudence and argues for a return to first principles—constitutional constraints should track the function and lived reality of coercive deprivation, not the label attached to it.