Dorf on Law

Posted by Sherry F. Colb In my Verdict column for this week , I write about the presumed impact of "ag-gag" laws that aim to prevent and punish undercover investigation and exposure of conditions within animal agriculture.  I analyze the complicated relationship between the concealment of what animals endure, and the consumption of the products that are taken from farmed animals.  I suggest that one cannot attribute consumer ignorance entirely to industry efforts, and one must accordingly address not only consumers' ignorance about the realities of farmed animals but also consumers' desire to remain ignorant. In this post, I want to take up a related issue that often arises in discussions that I and other vegans have with non-vegans and vegan-curious folks about the consumption of animal products besides flesh, such as eggs.  What seems to bother some people most about the cruelty associated with egg production is the waste of animals' lives.  Here, for exampl...

By Mike Dorf Tomorrow (Wed., May 16), I'll be a panelist at a UCLA Law School conference,  Animals and the Law: Multiple Perspectives .  The conference is free and open to the public.  Here I'll preview my prepared remarks for the panel on which I'll be speaking, First Amendment: Implications for Animals and Animal Law .  The other panelists are Claudia Haupt of G.W. Law School and Seth Kreimer of Penn Law School.  DoL contributor and my fellow Cornell Law Professor Sherry Colb will be moderating.  What follows is a rough summary of where I plan to go in my remarks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Assessing the implications of the First Amendment for animals and animal law is somewhat difficult because we have relatively few data points, but the main materials are not especially encouraging.  On one hand, two years ago, in United States v. Stevens , ...

By Mike Dorf I tend to share the view of those commentators who argue that it should not count for too much that Mitt Romney was at least an occasional bully in high school.  Although Charles Blow made a fair point about the inadequacy of Romney's apology, politicians are constantly making non-apology apologies ("mistakes were made"; "I'm sorry if anyone was offended"; etc.)  To my mind,  Andy Borowitz  best captured the heart of the issue, satirically attributing the following sentiment to Romney: Don't "judge me as the teenager who bullied one gay boy, but rather as the adult who fired thousands of people." Recognizing that Romney's adolescent behavior need not count for much in current politics, it nonetheless provides a useful occasion for thinking about whether and how much things have changed.  I'll do so through a couple of personal anecdotes.  I'm younger than Romney, so the events I describe occurred in elementary schoo...

-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan In my Verdict column this week , I offer the second installment of my "What Would Happen Under a President Romney?" series, which I launched two weeks ago ( Verdict column here , associated Dorf on Law post here ). In this week's episode, I explain again why Romney would do whatever the radical base of the Republican Party might tell him to do. This is especially true regarding budget policy, which is the focus of the column, both because of current Republicans' seething hatred of government spending, and because budget policies cannot (within some limits) be filibustered. They care more, and they are less constrained, when it comes to spending and taxing. My prediction is that the Republicans (with Romney meekly in tow) would -- if they had the opportunity -- do anything they could to cut spending. I describe Paul Ryan's (dishonest) budget proposals, and how they would be disastrous for the economy. Pointing out that the Repub...

-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan I have deliberately not yet read the many editorials and commentary discussing President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage . I have seen a clip of his interview, and I have read the first part of the news article in today's New York Times . I respect the opinions of the editorial board of the Times, as well as others who have surely weighed in by now. But I did not want my reaction to be influenced by others' reactions. As many readers of Dorf on Law know, this issue is personal for me. A little more than ten months ago, after the New York legislature passed (and Governor Andrew Cuomo signed) a law legalizing gay marriage in the State of New York, both Professor Dorf and I wrote celebratory posts on this blog. (Dorf here , Buchanan here ) In the final paragraph, I wrote: "The tide of history is clear. Even Obama's 'evolution' will be complete sometime soon. There will be more fits and starts, but there is no go...

By Mike Dorf My latest Verdict column wades into the controversy over Elizabeth Warren's past claim to be part Native American. (For a useful summary of the blawg coverage of this issue, click here .)  My conclusion?  That the issue is good for the Brown campaign because affirmative action is a useful wedge to divide minority voters from working class and middle class white voters.  In the course of  explaining how the controversy is really about affirmative action, I mention some common arguments both for and against affirmative action.  One of the arguments against is that affirmative action utilizes a two-wrongs-make-a-right logic.  Here I want to expand on that theme and also subject it to a little critical analysis. The Warren controversy highlights the difficulty of deciding whether someone "counts" for purposes of entitling that person to whatever bonus he or she gets for being a member of the relevant group.  And that determination can be ...

By Mike Dorf Over the weekend Joe Biden went on Meet the Press and said (more or less) that he supports marriage equality, thus seemingly highlighting a difference of opinion between himself and President Obama, who supports civil unions and whose views on same-sex marriage are still "evolving."  Truth be told, it's not entirely clear from the clip whether Biden was saying that he supports marriage equality as that term has come to be used or what is sometimes called marriage-in-all-but-name for same-sex couples, which is the Obama position. Here, watch for yourself. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy But it doesn't really matter what Biden actually said.  The news story that came out of the interview was that Biden has come out for same-sex marriage, whereas the President isn't quite there yet.  Taking that story at face value, it is at the very least bad messaging from the White House. Why?  Couldn...

By Mike Dorf In response to the Romney campaign's faux-outrage at the Obama campaign's suggestion that Romney might not have ordered the raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, the President's defenders have emphasized three main points. (1) It's true .  In 2007, Romney in fact said "it's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."  Thus we can presume that had Romney been President, he would not have redirected resources, as Obama did, to tracking bin Laden.  Perhaps Romney would have ordered the Abbottabad raid if he were presented with the same intelligence that Obama received in 2011, but a President Romney never would have gotten that intelligence, because he wouldn't have ordered the massive manhunt in the first place. (2) Are you on crack?   That's the question posed by Jon Stewart to Republicans who accused the Obama Administration of politicizing a military response to...

-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan [Note to readers: This post begins with an anecdote that I thought was the basis for a Dorf on Law post that I wrote two years ago (roughly). I have not, however, been able to find that post in the archive, making me think that I might have imagined writing that earlier post. In any case, if the story sounds familiar to some of you, I assure you that you are not alone.] In 2009, I received a notice from the New York State government, warning me that my state income tax delinquency from 2004 was about to be referred to a collection agency. Any such notice will make a person's heart skip a beat, of course. In my case, however, the initial fear quickly gave way to confusion. I had not lived in New York in 2004, so I could not imagine how I ended up with a tax bill from the state. My next thought was that fixing the problem would be absurdly time-consuming and frustrating. Even getting in touch with a human being would be difficult, I thought, to sa...

-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan Hypocrisy!! The State of Maryland recently registered a deed for fee simple ownership of land (on which a single-family home sits) to one Neil H. Buchanan. Granted, there are a dozen or so Neil Buchanan's in the world, including an English "Television presenter/producer, musician, guitarist, Actor" who once hosted a children's TV show called "Motormouth." There is also a mugshot of another Neil H. Buchanan here . But there is no doubt that this deed was registered to the guy who teaches tax law at The George Washington University. How could this be?! Professor Buchanan has been on a years-long crusade to convince the world that individual home ownership is both individually risky and socially damaging. Of a countless number of posts on the subject, the most recent can be found here -- from only two months ago! He says that the mortgage interest deduction is a bad idea, that corporations should own single-family homes an...