Skip Oliva takes issue with my statement that there’s nothing particularly unlibertarian about animal cruelty laws. I should have been more specific. I’m okay with state (or better yet, local) laws against animal cruelty. But I do oppose the federal government’s pursuit of Michael Vick, because there’s really no basis in the Constitution for it (with the usual disclaimer here, that yes, under the last seventy years or so of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court has stated otherwise. I happen to think they’re wrong.).

My approach to animal cruelty laws would be about the same as my approach to the abortion issue. Most people would agree that many animals deserve more moral consideration than, say, a table. Exactly what animals have what rights, and how those rights should be protected, are matters of line-drawing–police powers. And police powers are best left up to as local a jurisdiction as possible, so they can write laws that best reflect each state or community’s values.

We can then choose to live in places with laws that best reflect our own values. Federalism, combined with real freedom of movement, provides for those laboratories of democracy Justice Brandeis is often and rightfully praised for advocating.

I, for example, could then choose to live in a community where people who fight dogs to the death for sport are strung up by their testicles, doused in pork gravy, and left for the dogs they mistreated to gnaw on them like big juicy swinging hunks of rawhide (yes, I’m exaggerating).

But Skip’s right. This isn’t an appropriate use of federal law enforcement.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 10:54 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.