{"id":673,"date":"2022-10-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/?p=673"},"modified":"2022-10-09T14:48:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T18:48:12","slug":"the-supreme-courts-decision-in-pig-welfare-case-should-not-be-about-pigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2022\/10\/10\/the-supreme-courts-decision-in-pig-welfare-case-should-not-be-about-pigs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court’s Decision in Pig Welfare Case Should Not be About Pigs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In yesterday’s paper (but not online) the Star-Ledger<\/em> published an editorial “How much cruelty is a pork chop worth?” by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post<\/em> regarding National Pork Producers Council v. Ross<\/a><\/em>, a case to be argued in the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case involves a challenge to a California law adopted by initiative to prohibit the in-state sale of pork products produced by livestock practices that the proponents of the initiative petition deemed to be inhumane. The challengers basically assert that the law seeks to regulate out-of-state conduct((Almost all pork consumed in California is produced elsewhere.)) and this violates a doctrine known as the “dormant” or “negative” commerce clause.((The “commerce clause” of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate commerce between the States (“interstate commerce”). The dormant commerce clause is an interpretation of the Constitution that equates lack of Congressional regulation with an affirmative choice by Congress that the area be unregulated. It essentially denied States the power to regulate conduct affecting interstate commerce. It is really more complicated than that, but this explanation provides the essential point.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Parker editorial does a good job of engendering ethical sympathy for the pigs, but that should not be the basis of the Court’s ultimate decision in the case. The Court must decide whether, under our Constitution, California and its voters have the power to pass the law, not whether the farm practices mandated by that law should be imposed as an ethical matter. Parker’s result-oriented argument is essentially the same as made by those senators who have urged President Biden to declare an emergency in order to take action on climate change that Congress will not. As I noted last month<\/a>, “it is increasingly uncommon for those who feel strongly about an issue to separate the merits of a particular policy from the power of a supportive official to implement that policy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In closing, I want to note that Parker seems to assume that the liberal justices on the Court will vote the way she advocates when she writes that “the justices who make up the high court’s conservative majority have a rare opportunity to align themselves . . . with their liberal counterparts . . . .” While I am not going to predict how any justice will vote, I do point out that Justice Thomas is no friend of the dormant commerce clause. “The negative Commerce Clause has no basis in the text of the Constitution, makes little sense, and has proved virtually unworkable in application.\u201d Camps Newfound\/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, Me.<\/em>, 520 U.S. 564, 610 (1997) (Thomas, J., dissenting).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay Bohn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 10, 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In yesterday’s paper (but not online) the Star-Ledger published an editorial “How much cruelty is a pork chop worth?” by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post regarding National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, a case to be argued in the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday. The case involves a challenge to a California law … Continue reading “The Supreme Court’s Decision in Pig Welfare Case Should Not be About Pigs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}