Elie Mystal: How a Supreme Court Case About Pigs Could Further Undermine...Abortion Rights

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Atticus West
@AtticusWest
·
Follow
I really wish I had discovered @ElieNYC’s writing while I was in law school—he’s like a secret decoder ring for Supreme Court. Great piece here about the thinly-veiled policy preferences steering the decision-making of the individual justices.

thenation.com
How a Supreme Court Case About Pigs Could Further Undermine...Abortion Rights
On the surface, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, is about animal cruelty. But for the conservatives, it’s also a way to attack basic rights.
9:29 AM · Oct 14, 2022

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-pork-case-california/

I am a realist. In the legal context, that means I think judges and justices more or less make up the law as they go along to satisfy their political, social, or ideological preferences. There’s no objective constitutional reason for Chief Justice John Roberts to hate the idea of Black people voting. There’s nothing forcing Sonia Sotomayor to support the rights of women, just like there’s nothing that requires Neil Gorsuch to seek the destruction of the administrative state. These people believe the things they believe and just happen to be experts at searching the law to find ways to confirm their worldviews. Indeed, the justices’ votes are often easy to predict because their ideological priors are always so obviously on display.

Even when the justices vote “against” their assumed political interests, it’s only because they are positioning themselves for bigger ideological fights down the road. Sometimes it’s impossible to understand what the justices are even arguing about without knowing the laws the justices want to make up or destroy in the future.

This real-world lens is necessary to understand the big case argued in front of the Supreme Court this week: National Pork Producers Council v. Ross (that’s Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture). On the surface, National Pork Producers is about, well, pork production. Specifically, it’s about the horrific and inhumane way pregnant pigs are housed to reduce costs and maximize profits. The pork industry uses something called “gestation crates” to house pregnant sows: They are small cages measuring about two by seven feet, making it impossible for the 400–500 pound animals to do so much as turn around. They’re cruel, and researching them to get ready for this case has made me change what I look for on a package of bacon, because my stomach allows me to eat pigs but not torture them.

California voters, in their decency, passed a law, via referendum, that bans the sale of products made from pigs kept in these horrific conditions. The pork producers sued, arguing that the California law effectively regulates the pork industry outside the state (as most pig farms are not in California), and thus violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause says that only Congress has the power to regulate “interstate commerce.” That power is thought to prohibit states from passing regulations that extend beyond their borders, even in cases where Congress has not yet acted; lawyers call it the “dormant” commerce clause. In this case, the pork producers argued that even though Congress has not yet taken a position on pig torture, California’s law violates the dormant commerce clause by de facto regulating the pig farming industry by mandating how pigs must be farmed if they are to be sold in California.

*snip*

[Coventina]

1. So happy I don't eat pigs.

I love animals.
I don't eat them.

[brush]

2. Mystal is great. I perk up every time he's a guest on a show...

Last edited Fri Oct 14, 2022, 04:50 PM - Edit history (1)

as I know I'll be getting some excellent commentary. And I see what you mean about the pig farming law via the dormant clause may/will affect abortion rulings down the line.

Mystal is brilliant.

[Nevilledog]

3. He's a fun follow on Twitter

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R