I recently received a solicitation from a continuing education in the law provider, the Rutter Group, to sign up for Rutter’s “new” online course from Lewis & Clark Law School which could lead to what they advertize as an exciting, path-breaking, fulfilling “career in Animal Rights Law.”
Animal civil rights? Animal civil rights enforceable by crusading liberal lawyers in the courts? Animal civil rights as a “legal career.” Yes. Its been out there for awhile, if not on the nightly news. And it is growing apace by progressive liberal self-anointed (the animals haven’t asked) defenders of newly perceived or invented legal “rights” of animals. (It is unknown if these animal “rights” crusaders will specialize in different animals, e.g., pig rights specialists, chicken rights specialists, etc.)
Poor deluded me. Here I have spent the last thirty years or so as an attorney defending, mostly pro bono, the civil rights, constitutional rights, workers rights, employment rights, and veterans rights of humans.
Alas, I have been blind to the newly asserted proposition that the true victims of “rights” deprivations are “animals,” whose heretofore unrecognized legal “rights” are violated by — wait for it: Humans!
Apparently, it is only humans who can be sued for violation of an animal’s rights, and not other animals. Even predators, who naturally prey on the victim animals, apparently can sue for violation of their rights; but are apparently immune from being sued for “civil rights” violations for violation of the rights of the animals on which they prey, on the basis that the predators are, after all, “animals.”
According to the solicitation I received from the Lewis & Clark Law School by way of the Rutter Group, “animal rights” law practice is not just growing, it is expanding with “blazing speed.” (The solicitation is available on the websites of Lewis & Clark and the Rutter Group.)
It appears a new generation of liberal lawyers and law school academics are intent on going where no lawyers have gone before, enshrining in law “rights” of animals not heretofore recognized, and ensuring that evil carnivorous callous humans cease to violate the rights of animals, especially cows, pigs, chickens, and other edible ones, by filing lawsuits against humans who do violate those animals’ “rights,” including by eating them.
Will the “blazing speed” at which progressive liberals are advancing “animal rights law” trump the “rights of humans” for whom the Constitution was created by the Founding Fathers, who never mentioned or hinted that “animals” have “civil rights”?
I received a Rutter Group solicitation to enroll in the Animal Rights Law Conference of Lewis & Clark Law School because I am, and all lawyers are, obligated to meet the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) requirements of the State Bar.
Thus, I receive solicitations from various MCLE course providers approved by the Bar for MCLE credit. It is a big, expensive, money-making business, and a there is no escaping the Bar’s MCLE mandates. Continuing education credits are available at a price, including in Animal Rights Law, even if you have no desire ever to sue a person for a pig for violation of “civil rights.”
I admit I was surprised to receive from Rutter Group a solicitation for what it hailed as a “new program,” an Animal Rights Law Conference which, should I enroll, would result in certification of 13.5-hours of MCLE credit. This would cost only “$540” for online vicarious attendance in the (taped) Animal Rights Law Conference.
The conference was held at Stanford, but the sponsor of this “animal rights” MCLE training is Lewis & Clark Law School.
Where is Lewis & Clark Law School which is so enthusiastic and proud of being the tip of the spear, metaphorically speaking, of defense of animals’ rights? Where else–Portland, OR, the Principality of Progressive Liberal Political Correctness.
One wonders, after reading Lewis & Clark’s extolling of the glories of pig and other animal “rights” legal defense, if the liberal academics and animal rights warriors of Lewis & Clark Law School will perhaps now set out to rewrite the history of the historic trek of the humans Lewis and Clark to shield from the school children the horror that Lewis and Clark killed and ate on their long journey to the Oregon Trail and the Pacific coast as many innocent animals as they could slay in the wild for life-sustaining meals. And snacks.
Animal “rights,” enforceable by lawsuits in American courts, may sound absurd. But it is no joke. Indeed, there is an almost religious, messianic, “saving-the-world” fervor by the Progressive Liberal lawyers and law school academics in their solicitation of lawyers to attend their Animal Rights Law Conference to learn how to sue humans for violating the civil “rights” of animals, including of course, by eating them.
Sound impossible? Not in the “transformed” Progressive Liberal America in the Age of Obama in which the government seeks to intrude into every area of citizens lives, including what they are allowed to eat or drink and in what amounts, and Progressive Liberal “transformers” invent Constitutional “rights” never dreamed of by the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, nor perceived in the Constitution by any American generation until this one.
Don’t be surprised if one day you are served with a Summons to answer a law suit complaint filed on behalf of a pig, cow, chicken, for alleged violation of its “rights” brought by some starry-eyed, self-righteous ACLU lawyer, or other narcissistic Progressive Liberal who self-righteously glares at you in court in quivering moral superiority as he or she alleges that you not only had bacon at breakfast but actually and cruelly had a steak with it, along with your eggs, potatoes, and orange juice.
When that day comes, just be thankful that progressive liberal lawyers, judges, and law school academics haven’t decided that eggs, potatoes, and oranges have civil “rights,” too. At least, not yet.
(Rees Lloyd, is a longtime California civil rights lawyer, a veterans activist, and a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce.)