Animals and the Constitution with Michael Dorf

He's gonna teach us some constitutional law, and he has been teaching his students some constitutional law specifically as it, uh, relates to animals, which I bet you're thinking it doesn't relate to animals whatsoever, but of course it does, because everything does. Welcome Michael. I I'm actually gonna skip the rest of your wildly impressive bio and just launch in.

Michael Dorf: That's fine. You can assume people either know who I am or don't care.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. It's pretty much the same for all of us, isn't it?

Michael Dorf: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Alright. Just a quick reminder before we get to that, about the Our Hen House podcasts, Rising Anxieties comes out on Tuesdays, The Hen Report on Thursdays, and the long form interview, including this one, on Fridays and bonus for Flock members comes out on Monday.

We're a podcast and we're on YouTube. Please subscribe and hit like wherever you listen. That really, really helps us out. And Michael, uh, I'm excited to talk about this. I have to say, usually I'm very up to speed when... well, or I try to be anyway when I interview people about a case or whatever. But I'm kind of flying blind here.

I'm just gonna ask you questions about this course, and hopefully I can, I can interrupt you from time to time with, with useful, uh, questions. But I am really curious how this course, uh, was planned and how it played out. And you've been an activist for many years. You've spoken to many people about animal issues, but uh, as far as I know, this is the first time you have actually taught an actual course.

Uh, so, so,

Michael Dorf: Depends on how you characterize it. So, uh, I, I was thinking about that 'cause you, you mentioned that in the promo on, uh, Rising Anxieties, uh, this week

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, thank you for listening.

Michael Dorf: Of course. Um, and uh, actually six years ago, Sherry Colb and I taught a seminar called, um, Human Rights as Animal Rights and a and Vice Versa. Uh, and that was a semester long seminar, so it wasn't constitutional law as such, although there were some constitutional law issues. But I have taught sort of animal law, animal rights, uh, to a law school class before.

Mariann Sullivan: I did not realize that. I wish I could have taken that course. I bet it was really good.

Michael Dorf: It was fun.

Mariann Sullivan: Uh, alright, so this course is, is a little different because it's specifically about constitutional law, which, you know, I think a lot of people hearing that would be like, what? Uh, so what were the main challenges in formulating a course that did approach animal law from a specifically a constitutional perspective?

Michael Dorf: Yeah. So, you know, most animal law issues or animal rights issues arise, uh, in their own contexts. And you know, one of the things that's hard about teaching, uh, law students is they take classes, in particular subjects, right? So they're, they begin with contracts, tort, civil procedure, et cetera. Uh, but of course the world doesn't carve itself up that way.

So someone doesn't, you know, if you're a lawyer, you hang out a shingle, a prospective client doesn't walk, uh, into your office and say, I've got a contracts problem. They say, I've got a problem. Uh, and so that's true of animal, uh, rights issues as well. So, you know, if somebody, uh, wants to, uh, do a protest, say, and there are, uh, limits, or there's an ag gag law, right?

There're gonna be constitutional issues, but there're going to be other issues. So in, in some ways, carving up animal rights, animal law issues into constitutional law pieces is a little artificial. Uh, but, you know, I took that as it is and I, I thought about like, what are the main ways in which, uh, animal rights, animal law intersects with constitutional law. And then I just tried to, you know, do a different one each week. Uh, I should say this was, uh, what I would call a, uh, sort of a half a seminar. Cornell has this, uh, practice we started about half a dozen years ago of offering what they call home seminars. Uh, and a home seminar means that the students take it for one credit rather than the usual two or three for a seminar. It meets two hours every other week during the course of the semester. And in principle, it can meet in your home. Uh, in my case, um, and, and some other, some of my colleagues, I didn't wanna do that because as, as you've described, my dogs are the worst behaved dogs in the world, although I, I would point out that they're getting better.

Mariann Sullivan: They are better. I've seen them relatively recently, and definitely if we're talking about comparative judging, they're definitely better than they used to be.

Michael Dorf: Right. So, but anyway, they would be

Mariann Sullivan: But I can't even imagine trying to do a course.

Michael Dorf: Right. Uh, so I, so we met, uh, in a law school seminar room and to give it a sort of homeier feel, uh, each time we met, I baked something them or, or, uh, bought them. The last couple of sessions I actually bought, uh, vegan donuts. There's a great place, uh, in Ithaca, uh, called Angel Hearts that, uh, makes really good

Mariann Sullivan: Have they reopened? I mean, not to distract us from the, the issue at hand, but like, let's talk about important stuff for me. Because last year I was teaching there and the whole time Angel Hearts was closed.

Michael Dorf: They moved, um,

Mariann Sullivan: Okay.

Michael Dorf: They're in a smaller place, but they, when I went there to pick up my donuts on a, uh, Sunday afternoon, uh, it was packed, uh, which was great. Uh,

Mariann Sullivan: That's great.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. So anyway, so, so that gave it a kind of homier feel and, uh, with respect to the topics, so, um, I can just, you know, read through the syllabus.

So the first week we talked about standing and we can come back to each of

Mariann Sullivan: No, I, I wanna come back to, to the specific topics, but yeah, an overview would be good.

Michael Dorf: Right. So the first week we talked about, uh, standing, uh, which arises in lots of cases in which, uh, plaintiffs are bringing suit on behalf of animals, and there's question whether the, uh, humans, some organization, or the animals themselves are legally entitled to, uh, show up in courts.

That's, those are standing questions. We can come back to that. Uh, the second meeting, uh, I had, uh, John Adenitire and, uh, Raffael Fasel as guests. Uh, I know you've had them

Mariann Sullivan: Right. They were on

Michael Dorf: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: talking about their new book about animals in the constitution.

Michael Dorf: Uh, that my session, um, was pretty shortly after you had them on, uh, the Animal Law Podcast.

Uh, John I had in person because he was, uh, in New York City. And so it was relatively easy to get him up here. Uh, Rafael, we, uh, Zoomed in from, uh, the uk. Uh, and that was great. Uh, we can talk more about that. Um, the next session, uh, we talked about, um, the New York, uh, uh, Court of Appeals Happy The Elephant case, uh, technically not a US constitutional law question, but the course was titled Animals and the Constitution.

I didn't say which constitution. Um, and, uh, well, so that's, I think that's actually that played out. 'Cause you know, in a lot of.

Mariann Sullivan: Uh, totally, totally. You have to be flexible here.

Michael Dorf: And in a lot of the sessions, um, and I do this in my basic constitutional law class also, uh, we bring in comparative constitutional law. So, you know, this is how

Mariann Sullivan: But wait a second. I mean, not to get into the details, but the, I mean, that's a common law case, like how is it constitutional in any, in any country?

Michael Dorf: I'm glad you asked that question, Mariann. So, I, in, in New York State, uh, there is a, uh, statute that codifies the common law right to habeas corpus. But in addition, the New York Court of Appeals has clearly said that the New York State Constitution preserves the common law right to habeas

Mariann Sullivan: So it, it's kind of a reach, Michael, to be honest.

Michael Dorf: No, no. And in so far as the statute might not cover a particular, uh, opportunity, uh, it's covered by the, the New York Constitution. And I actually had a case, uh, about 10 years ago, uh, in which I had occasion to invoke that principle. I was representing a, um, a peace activist who was, uh, trying to challenge an order that prevented him from engaging in a protest at a military base. Uh, and we were able to argue successfully that although he didn't fit within the statute, uh, he did fit within the, uh, constitutionally pre, uh, preserved common law right of, uh, habeas corpus.

Mariann Sullivan: Okay. I, I, I, I'm in, I'm buying it. Totally constitutional.

Michael Dorf: Uh, the following

Mariann Sullivan: You know, to be honest too, and to step back just a second, it also, even if you weren't technically constitutional, by having that provision in the New York State Constitution, it fits within the like kind of broader purview of, of, of the idea, of this course, of taking very broad principles that governs society, which the common law actually fits into. I think like psychologically it fits into a, a constitutional law perspective.

I mean, maybe you disagree, but for me it works.

Michael Dorf: I don't, I don't disagree at all. And in fact, you know, a, a chunk of our discussion, it wasn't the dominant part of the discussion, but a chunk of our discussion when we talked about the case was whether there would be an opportunity to bring such a case, uh, under the federal, uh, uh, suspension clause in federal habeas corpus.

Uh, you know, interestingly, the suspension clause, which is in, uh, article one, uh, section nine of the Constitution says, right, the privilege of the writ of habeas corporation shall not be suspended except in, you know, uh, cases of, uh, invasion or rebellion, uh, where the public safety shall so require. I'm just trying to give you the full context, but, but it doesn't say anything about human beings or even persons.

So, you know, you could make the argument under, uh, the US Constitution as well. I don't think it would fare very well, um,

Mariann Sullivan: You know, that's hardly the standard we use in animal law.

Michael Dorf: Absolutely right. Um, okay, so then the following session was on constitutional rights of nature and animals. And this was, um, mostly comparative, right? So we talked about, um, decisions, uh, by the Supreme Court of Columbia. Uh, some of the other cases, uh, you know, Latin America has surprisingly been a, a source, uh, for these. There's, you know,

Mariann Sullivan: In the forefront, Latin America.

Michael Dorf: Uh, there's, you know, some, uh, law from New Zealand about rights of nature. So, so that was really interesting. And it, it also opened a window into discussing sort of the differences between valuing nature qua nature, um, on the one hand valuing species, uh, qua species, uh, on the other, and then on the third hand, valuing each individual animal, uh, for their own sake.

Uh, so that was a really, that was a really great session.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that is so important because, uh, just as environmental law always has, uh, been formulated, rights of nature law tends to be very abstract, uh, you know, in its concepts. Not quite as much because it does like look at very specific, uh, natural entities, but not really focused on the, the same fundamental principle of looking at sentience that animal law is really focused on.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. Yeah. And so there's, and so of course part of what we talked about was where are there overlaps and where are there conflicts between these different,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that's a great conversation.

Michael Dorf: Uh, and it was, um, and then, uh, the next session we had was actually sort of core US constitutional law. So as, uh, most listeners are probably aware under, uh, US constitutional law, if the government wants to infringe a constitutional right, like the right to freedom of speech or free exercise of religion, uh, it can do so if the law is narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest. And so we looked at two cases in which, uh, there was a question of whether animal protection might be a compelling state interest sufficient to override, uh, asserted constitutional rights on the other side. So one of them is a case that I, I've learned recently that you are writing about now, which is, uh, Church of Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye against City of Hialeah. Uh.

Mariann Sullivan: The case with the most fun name, uh, in, in Supreme Court jurisprudence. It's just fun to say it.

Michael Dorf: Right. Uh, so, so there, the question is about a law forbidding, uh, animal slaughter. Uh, it actually forbids ritual slaughter, and it was clearly targeted at practitioners of Santoria. Uh, uh, and so the court struck it down as religious discrimination, but left open the possibility expressly articulated by Justice Blackman, joined by Justice O'Connor in a concurrence that, uh, there might be a compelling interest in protecting animals against, uh, inhumane, uh, acts, including presumably slaughter, uh, in a law that was not targeted at religion specifically.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, that would be hard to do since you would probably have to ban all slaughter.

Michael Dorf: Yes. Right. Well, as a practical.

Mariann Sullivan: Always the problem.

Michael Dorf: Yes. Uh, uh, and then the other case we talked about, uh, in connection with that was the United States against Stevens, uh, which is the case involving the law that was enacted to forbid crush videos. Uh, this is that the law that, uh, forbids, uh, depictions of, uh, illegal animal cruelty. Uh, unfortunately the Supreme Court, uh, invalidated it, uh, and rejected the notion that depictions of animal cruelty are a, uh, prescribable category of speech in the same way that child pornography and obscenity and fighting words and so forth might be. Um, they did suggest that a narrower law, uh, that just focused on crush videos, um, might be okay. Uh, and actually the case is most interesting for the solo dissent by Justice Samuel Alito, uh, who is not normally my favorite justice, uh, but he's, um, on, on animal issues, he seems to be, you know, the least bad of the justices. And he actually had some, you know, nice things to say about, uh, animals and their suffering in the case.

So that was a really interesting discussion and it sort of brought in the students who, um, had the least interest in animal protection. I'm not sure why they were taking the seminar. Maybe it was they wanted to just, you know, they heard about the baked goods or something.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I certainly, I definitely wanted to ask you about who took it and, um, and, and why you think they took it and whether they all went vegan. Um, but let's wait until we get to the end of your, uh, summary.

Michael Dorf: So, uh, so then two more sessions. Um, one was, uh, what I called free speech for animals, by which I meant on behalf of animals. And there that we, we just talked about ag gag, uh, 'cause there's so much to talk about, about there.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Michael Dorf: um, and then the final session was on, um, what I called animals in Federalism. Uh, so we talked a little bit about, um, uh, national Pork Producers Council versus Ross, right? That's the case involving California's Prop 12, where the Supreme Court upheld Prop 12 against a dormant commerce clause challenge. And I also distributed an article, uh, to them, uh, written a number of years ago by, uh, uh, law professor, uh, discussing whether the, uh, endangered Species Act is a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate interstate or foreign commerce, uh, even as applied to intrastate species, which is important for environmental considerations and to the extent that those are useful in pre, uh, protecting animals and habitat.

Uh, an important question. Uh, and

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And, and when I, I know nothing about, I mean, I know it's always talked about that the ESA is unconstitutional, but I've, I, I've never bothered to look into why people think it might be.

Michael Dorf: Right. Well, the upshot of this article is that it is constitutionally valid. We, you know, we explored the arguments made by the this author and some other possibilities. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Sounds amazing, but let's get back. Let, let's, let's go back to, um, the beginning and go through a little bit more details now that we have the overview. And as I mentioned, before we do that even, let's set the scene a little bit. Who took the class? Why did they take it, and what, what did they come away with?

And it, you know, I mean, you are a very popular professor at Cornell Law School. I assume some people ha have taken your courses for one reason or another and wanna take another course with you. So there's a personal... as an adjunct, a poor, lonely adjunct, we don't have that kind of advantage. Nobody knows who we are.

Um, but, uh,

Michael Dorf: Yeah. So

Mariann Sullivan: it, I, I would think that would give you a lot of opportunity to have a wide variety of perspectives.

Michael Dorf: So, uh, that's correct. Uh, we, I would say about half of the students were students who had taken either my constitutional law class or my federal courts class, or both in the past. And, you know, they just wanted sort of more of me, uh, 'cause they

Mariann Sullivan: Hmm. Or they heard about the donuts.

Michael Dorf: Right. Well, I didn't advertise them, so...

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, all right. All right.

Michael Dorf: Right. Um, and there were two vegans in the class. Um,

Mariann Sullivan: it. Is about par for the course. That's what I usually find.

Michael Dorf: Uh, and so two, two were vegans and then an additional two were what I would call vegan adjacent.

Mariann Sullivan: Sorry. Sorry about the cat tail.

Michael Dorf: No, it's, it's fine. I'm, I'm, I'm sad that I'm in my office now, so my dogs aren't here to be on camera. Um, yeah, so two, I guess, yeah, another two sort of vegan adjacent.

Um, then, then, uh, just a mix of people, you know, maybe they thought it, they liked the topic, they, they were intrigued. Uh, the... I don't know whether this was because of me or because of, um, you know, the topic, but there wasn't a whole lot of pushback against, you know, the animals, right? So people would sometimes raise questions about whether a particular argument worked given, given the doctrine. You know, in a case like, um, uh, the, the Happy case, right, where you could see people who are opposed to animal rights really being activated, we didn't really get any of that.

It was all about analyzing the pieces of the argument, uh, and, you know, what, what would work and what wouldn't work. Uh, so I found that quite, quite useful and,

Mariann Sullivan: I have always found that to be the case. So I don't think it's just because of you. I, I mean people do not, do not express views that... it, it's like we're living in the alternate world. Nobody expresses views that have anything like doubting that animals like are deserving of, of at least care and probably rights. Like it...

if they have those hesitations, they're hesitant to express them in a room where, uh, obviously the professor is, uh, is, you know, in a of a different viewpoint and many of the other students are. I think it really demonstrates also, I mean, partially it's just, you know, law students don't like to like, uh like piss off the professor or whatever. They're afraid they're, they're going to be offended. But I think it's just, it's a demonstration of that most people's attitudes towards animals are not carefully held.

Michael Dorf: Yeah, I think that's right. Although I will, so I have one data point that suggests a little bit of it is don't want to piss off the professor, which is that the, the most pushback was during the session when, uh, we had John and Rafael, uh, that, and it was on sentience, not as a criterion for rights. I don't think that there were pe I don't recall people saying, well, why should sentient beings have rights? But, you know, well, why is that hooked to the Constitution and so forth? And um, and I think they were, they felt, I'm just speculating here, but I think that this, the two or three students who made these points felt a little freer to challenge John and Rafael than to challenge me, which is unfortunate. I like students to challenge me.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Michael Dorf: Um, and of course they were also challenging me 'cause I agree with them about, about these issues.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, yeah, I wish there was a little bit more of that. And before we get into the details of some of these classes, which I really wanna do, I, I know this is kind of an insane question, but can you just kind of give us a brief overview of your view of the Constitution and the Supreme Court and what role they play in the governance of our country?

'Cause it's such a wide, people have very wide array of views on what, what, that's what it's all about

Michael Dorf: Yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: and how, not just how you interpret it, but, but what is its function? And I, I just, you know, can you just set that scene briefly? I know that's like probably a book, but, uh,

Michael Dorf: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: but just so we have an idea of where you're coming from on that, not just on animals, but on the Constitution itself.

Michael Dorf: I'll say a few things. So first, I regard the US Constitution as profoundly flawed. Uh, unlike many constitutions written in the last 80, so some odd years, it doesn't contain any, um, social, economic, or cultural rights. Um, it's, uh, highly a negative constitution. Uh, so that's on the right side. On the structural side, it over represents, uh, agricultural communities and underrepresents, uh, urban ones. It also is too difficult to amend. Um, uh, and I guess the, the last thing I'll say is it doesn't really work in that it was designed by people who thought that. the, there would be much greater loyalty to institutions and despised political parties. And what's happened, uh, really it happened almost immediately.

As soon as George Washington was, was stepped, uh, decided not to run for a third term. What happened was political parties became essential to the, uh, the system and then party loyalty dominated institutional loyalty. And so when you have circumstances like we currently have where the president, uh, is of the same party as the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, you have essentially no checks and balances, uh, because they're not. the president, as you know, maintaining their loyalty to the, to the legislative branch. Conversely, when you have divided government, uh, you have, you often have the opposite problem, which is that the government is completely ineffective. Uh, and so I am not one of these people who thinks that, you know, oh, we've got this wonderful constitution if only people would, you know, give it a ch right.

I, I think it's deeply put. Having said that, right, uh, there are many things about it that are interesting, uh, that, uh, can be made to work well. I, I guess I feel about the US Constitution as I feel about most things, which is, okay, they've got their flaws, but let's try to make the best of it. And so with respect to constitutional interpretation, uh, I think that, uh, judges, legislators, everybody ought to try to make sense of the document in a way that serves the greater good.

Mariann Sullivan: And obviously as far as we're concerned, that includes, uh, animals in some way, though it's pretty hard to include animals in it. I mean, people have tried, but, uh, but by governing people, we often govern what happens to animals. Uh, it.

Michael Dorf: I would say one other thing about that, right? Which is, um, you know, on, uh... the Constitution just a limit on government. It also empowers government to do various things. Uh, and one of the things that empowers governments to do is to promote the general welfare. Uh, I see no reason why the general welfare can't include the welfare of, of animals. Uh, so, so I do think that animals are included, not necessarily in the sense that, uh, courts are going to grant them or that the framers intended them to have individual constitutional rights, but in the sense that it is a permissible goal of legislation to, uh, work for animal wellbeing. And we see cases that, that in indicate that.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, which is hugely important. I mean, we could easily live in a world where there wasn't considered, and many people would argue that, that, that it's not a legitimate purpose of government.

Michael Dorf: Yep.

Mariann Sullivan: All right. Let's get, let's get into a little details because you started with standing, which is a really logical place to start because it's, uh, it's usually the first question I ask people when I interview them.

How did you even get into court? And I noticed that this was the topic of your first class and, and so you were also kind of introducing the whole course to your students. Can you tell us a little bit about how you approached it? Both, I mean, since you're talking to students, they don't understand that much about standing.

I mean, they've taken common law, but standing is usually not the, you know, the top issue on people's minds. And, uh, and then helping them understand like how crazy standing is when it comes to animals and thinking of some ways to deal with it.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. So, um, first thing I, I did when we talked about standing was, you know, to note that, uh, one need not be a human being to have standing. So all sorts of artificial entities like corporations, municipalities, organizations, have legal standing and, uh, there is case law in some of the lower courts that allows for animals to have what's called article three standing, meaning that they have standing so far as the constitution is concerned.

And then the harder question is often, do they have any, any rights that give rise to a cause of action that allows them to sue. Um, I did acknowledge that granting standing to animals is trickier, uh, than the sort of conventional case

Mariann Sullivan: No kidding.

Michael Dorf: right? Well, because some... who's going to speak for the animals, right?

But, but that too is not unprecedented, right? We have, uh, we have cases of next friends standing. We have guard a guardian ad litem cases for humans, right? Uh, uh, very young minors, uh, people with severe disabilities, uh, who are incapable of, uh, speaking for themselves. Uh, and so that's not an insuperable obstacle. Another piece we talked about at some length, uh, was sort of historical. So, you know, the, probably the most appropriately reviled case in US constitutional history is Dred Scott. Um, Dred Scott is ultimately a sort of quasi standing case. Uh, the court doesn't say that, uh, Scott lacks standing. It says that the that there's no diversity jurisdiction, but that's because of its, uh, determination that, uh, Americans of African descent, even, uh, freed Blacks in the north at the time, uh, could not be US citizens. Uh, and, um, you know, so, so the idea that this is just a technical, you know, gatekeeping requirement is, you know, it's got lots of, uh, ideological content.

We then talked a little bit about some of the details of standing doctrine, which, uh, bled into some discussions of environmental law. Uh, and there is this, uh, one of the leading standing cases in, uh, US sort of constitutional doctrine is a case called Luhan Against Defenders of Wildlife, uh, which is a crazy case, um, in that requires that in order to have standing to complain about some environmental harm, one must have concrete plans to visit the place where that harm is going to be, uh, occurring. As we discussed, right, this sort of, uh, is perverse in that the point of environmental preservation is to keep humans out, um, potentially even as tourists. Uh, 'cause you know, tourism, even ecotourism can have, uh, an impact. But there's this notion that's sort of deeply built into the, into US law, and in the law of standing now, that in order to, um, have an interest in the natural world, including its animals, the people who were claiming the rights here were interested in, you know, uh, observing elephants and r rhinoceros and so forth.

But that in order to have standing, uh, you have to want to use the natural resource in some way as opposed to the law giving people a right to have those, um, animals and the nature just sort of preserved. Uh, and then we sort of talked about what implications that might have for the rights of individual animals who'd want to, uh, wanna sue or, or for, on whose behalf, uh, a person would wanna bring a case.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. So did you, you got into the problem of not just, uh, whether animals could have standing theoretically, but when a, when laws are passed to protect animals, uh, humans are sometimes held not to have standing because the law was, wasn't meant to protect them. And animals are held not to have standing because they're animals.

So it ends up with noone having standing,

Michael Dorf: Right, right. Is the, the human, the humans either don't have standing or they don't have a cause of action. Right. There's this technical difference.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, yeah. Which sometimes they call a statutory standing. It's the, the most confusing, uh, use of language. Uh, but I, I much prefer to call it a cause of action. Yeah.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. I mean, the, the Naruto case is a, is a,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Tell us about the Naruto case. I, I noticed that that was, that was, that was the case that you assigned for this, uh, sub topic.

Michael Dorf: It, I don't really, I don't remember. I'm gonna look back at my syllabus to see whether I assigned it for that, for that case. Yeah, I did. Uh, that was one of

the...

I I assigned a, uh, a law review article and, uh, the Naruto case. Um, and so for listeners who don't remember, Naruto was, uh, this monkey, um, who took a selfie, um, on this camera that this guy had set up, um, uh, in the natural habitat. And then PETA, on behalf of Naruto, brought a lawsuit against the photographer saying that the copyright belonged to Naruto, not to the, uh, photographer. And therefore, that the, the proceeds from this photograph, which is an adorable photograph, um, ought to go to, um, I think it was for a monkey sanctuary or something.

They weren't gonna have, you know, Naruto, uh, use it personally. Uh, and the ninth circuit assumed because there was prior case law in the ninth Circuit that Naruto had article three standing, but then said that the Copyright Act didn't give him a cause of action and didn't give it to PETA either. And so that's how they get rid of it.

So there's always, you know, um, when I teach federal courts, I often tell my students that if they want to, if they end up practicing in this area, um, I, I say this specifically about habeas law, but it's true about a lot of, um, sort of, uh, public interest litigation. You can decide, you can, you can choose between whether you wanna do good or whether you wanna win. Uh, because, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: And hopefully find a little overlap.

Michael Dorf: Yes, but it, but there are so many ways for defendants to defeat, uh, claims of... justice claims, whether they're brought on behalf of pe, people who are incarcerated, immigrants who are detained animals, whatever, that you have to sort of, you have to find a way to navigate through all of the different hurdles. Whereas if you're on the defendant's side, you just have to win on one of those issues. Uh, and so that's, that was a, an example of this.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Uh, the Naruto case, I, I find that that students are absolutely in love with it 'cause it's so clever. Uh, but it's, I mean, when you think of all of the unbelievably sympathetic cases in animal law, of animal suffering horrific harm, and we can do nothing about them, it's just kind of our... I mean, it didn't have really sympathetic facts.

I mean, nobody, you know,

Michael Dorf: And I think when, I think when the case was first

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, the poor photographer, like he wasn't making a a bundle or anything.

Michael Dorf: Yes. I mean, when the fir, when the case was first in the news, I, I kind of, I think I wrote something, um, not very sympathetic to PETA for bringing this case, uh, because I thought it would invite ridicule and not, and focus on the wrong issues.

Um, I'm not sure that's still my view, but, but yeah, it is a kind of one off.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. All right. I mean, tell me if you wanna discuss a specific topic, but if not, I thought we would go back to the First Amendment cases and go a little bit more into them, particularly the, um, I just kind of, I mean maybe it's because I am, I have been looking at Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, um, and, and thinking about it, and I'm just curious, do you think it was wrongly decided? Because many, many animal groups, uh, put in, uh, a Amicus briefs encouraging the Supreme Court to find that there had not been, um, a violation of constitutional... of the, you know, the First Amendment.

Uh, and, and can you talk a little bit about the, the First Amendment cause of action and, and your. Just your own personal views. 'Cause I don't really find that I think that it was wrongly decided.

Michael Dorf: No, I don't think it's wrongly decided either. Um, uh, so you have to back up a little bit. So, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: Please.

Michael Dorf: Decided in 1993. In a case three years earlier called Employment Division against Smith, the Supreme Court rejected a free exercise claim by two Native Americans, uh, who had been dismissed from their jobs because they used peyote in a ritual, uh, as part of, uh, their, their worship service.

Uh, and the Supreme Court in that case sort of changed the understanding of free exercise of religion. Prior to that, the case law said that if a law, uh, or policy, uh, makes it very difficult or for somebody to engage in their, uh, part of their religion, then the government needs to satisfy strict scrutiny, needs to show that it has a compelling interest and that the law is narrowly tailored to advance that interest. In Smith, the court said, well, no actually, as long as the law doesn't target religion and this one didn't. Oregon forbade everybody from using peyote. then the a so-called neutral law of general applicability doesn't implicate free exercise of religion. The free exercise of religion is essentially an anti-discrimination principle. Um, and I wasn't a big fan of the Smith rule at the time. I've since sort of, um, uh, had some... become more ambivalent about it. Uh, partly because I, I thought that it, uh, I thought the rule undervalued minority religions as you see in the Smith case itself. The part of the case that everybody agreed to is, well free exercise forbids religious discrimination. Um, and so does the establishment clause, by the way. Uh, the question, you know, there's a disagreement as to whether it also forbids the application of general laws in, uh, to people who happen to be engaged in some sort of religious practice. But everybody agrees that it forbids religious discrimination. Now, in recent years, the Supreme Court has entertained what I believe is an extravagant definition of religious discrimination. So during the COVID Pandemic, um, after Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, flipped the, majority on this, uh, they struck down a California law that forbade home gatherings of more than three households, even though the law said nothing about religion.

So if you had four households gathering together to watch a football game, the law applied to you. But the court said, this is religious discrimination because, well, he, these people wanna have a worship service. But the, but California allows more than four unrelated, uh, households to gather in a grocery store. And that's just not what discrimination conventionally means. Uh, but they have run with this much broader definition of, of discrimination. And I, I don't, I don't agree with that. However, the law in Lakumi, uh, it did pretty clearly discriminate. It was aimed at, at, at, um, practitioners of Santeria, there was probably a racial, uh, element to that, not just religious discrimination, uh, who were engaging in practices that, while I find cruel to animals are not crueler to the animals than what, uh, everybody else was engaging in when they were, uh, purchasing meat, uh, from the dead bodies of animals slaughtered, uh, not for ritual purposes.

So I think the case is rightly decided. Um, and, you know, it's a, it's a just a feature of equality provisions that sometimes a law can be unconstitutional because it forbids too little, um, and not just because it forbids too much. So that, you know, the remedy I would wanna see is, as we said earlier, uh, for them to ban all, uh, animal slaughter and, you know, we're, we're a bit away from that.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. But it, it is a problem of, I mean, particularly in this context, but in a lot of contexts that every argument kind of proves too much. Uh, that, that when we win our argument that this should be banned, we win an argument that we, we should completely change the way society treats animals. I mean, really the same, the same problem came up within, um, the, the speech case, United States versus Stevens.

Right? That, uh,

Michael Dorf: I just wanna put a pin in that.

Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely, absolutely.

Michael Dorf: That made me think of, um, one of the sort of themes that reemerged throughout the course of the semester, uh, most clearly when we were talking about ha the Happy case was, um, the sort of the problem for animal rights lawyers of how to offer a court a limiting principle that we don't believe in. So, you know, the, the question arises of, um, okay, well if elephants, what about cows? And of course the other side says that, 'cause they want say it as a slippery slope and we wanna go down that slippery slope, but we j we know we're not gonna win this case, uh, if the...

Mariann Sullivan: yeah, we'll be going down that series slope all by ourselves and the court will be

Michael Dorf: Um, yeah. And so, you know, that's a, that, but that's, that's a problem for cause lawyers everywhere. Uh, and so when we talked about that a bit, I should say, um, uh, uh, Chief Judge Wilson was actually at Cornell, uh, about three weeks ago. Uh, um,

Mariann Sullivan: Who wrote the dissent in, uh,

Michael Dorf: the,

Mariann Sullivan: the Happy, Happy case in the New York Court of Appeals.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. And this was not prompted by me, and it was not prompted by somebody in my class.

But at one point, uh, the interlocutor, who is a third year student who invited him, uh, asked him what he was, he was there to talk about, uh, just to give a general talk and answer student questions about

Mariann Sullivan: Nice.

Michael Dorf: and talk about his career. And he was great. Uh, but the student asked him what's the favorite case, uh, opinion you've written?

And he said his dissent in that case.

Mariann Sullivan: Really, really?

Michael Dorf: Yeah, he volunteered that,

Mariann Sullivan: You know, I, I have to say that, uh, though, I, I loved his dissent. I, I loved both of the dissents. I thought they were excellent, but they did both draw a line that I think was inappropriate to draw, and it was really the majority that, that, that said, well, if we're gonna do this for elephants, you know, what about cows?

I mean, that is totally not a quote. I've

Michael Dorf: Right,

Mariann Sullivan: it a long time ago. I don't remember exactly what she said, but, uh, but you know, I, I tend to agree with that. Like you, you, like, in order to allow the elephant to win, you have to, I, I think that Judge Wilson specifically drew a line between wild animals and domesticated animals and talked about how different they are.

And of course, no. That's, that's not a line I am at all willing to draw. But if you don't draw that line, then, then every animal on the planet has a right to habeas corpus.

Michael Dorf: Yeah, no, that's right. And, uh, but it, you know, this is, this is something that I, I sort of struggled with, with when I, you know, um, 20 some odd years ago, uh, when I did a lot of work with, um, uh, Lambda and the, uh, ACLU's, uh, LGBT Rights project, uh, on before we got same-sex marriage, right? Which was, uh, asking for additional rights and then saying, but you don't have to recognize marriage. Uh, when, of course they wanted to recognize marriage, but you wanted to give the court a, a place to stop.

Mariann Sullivan: Right, but you're trying to like give and, and actually the, the, the point where you're splitting hair is actually, is not that it's not right. It's not just that you don't like it, it actually doesn't make that much sense. I mean, all of the arguments that would set Happy free could be made for a cow. I mean, there's no real reason that it couldn't.

Uh, so yeah, it is one of the big problems of practicing law, um, as, as your method of advocacy, uh, for animals, that, uh, you're never gonna win the whole, the whole ball game. And, you know, as a, as a result, I feel like stiff... as a result, you have to argue for things that you don't necessarily believe. And I, I really feel that Stephen Wise, of course, you know, the founder of The Non-human Rights Project drew that line really well.

He never gave up the farmed animals, but he, he, he always was just willing to push them to a side. I think in his heart, what he believed is that you have to break down that wall between animals and humans, that animals have no rights. Uh, and then once you do, you can keep going. Um, but that's a really hard, uh, rhetorical, uh, task to, to advocate just for the animal that you're, you're representing and not, and try to avoid the implications for anybody else. And let you know the court can join the, can draw those implications, but, uh, you don't want to.

Michael Dorf: I, but I also think that there's a relatively simple, although maybe it's, you know, kind of too cute way around that, which is, um, as a lawyer, you have a client and your

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Michael Dorf: advocate the interest of that client, and that has to be at top of the list. Uh, even if it means that other causes that you care about are going to be subordinated at least temporarily.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And I think he drew, that's exactly was his thought process. And he, but he just drew it really well, that he didn't actually throw anybody under the bus, but just stuck to, just stuck to his client. Uh, which, you know, that can be hard to do when you're on the spot. Uh, but I agree, your job there is to represent that elephant.

Even if representing that elephant means that, you know, you, you're, you're not, you're not proclaiming your support for everything you'll believe in. Uh, that that's a problem in every, uh, as you pointed out, as you just pointed out, like in cause lawyering in general. Um,

Michael Dorf: So you wanted to talk about the speech case, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, let's talk about the speech case.

Michael Dorf: Uh,

Mariann Sullivan: So was that one rightly decided? It sounded like you don't agree.

Michael Dorf: No, I don't agree. Um, and that one I don't agree just as a, I mean, I don't agree of my, because I care about animals, but also because I care about honesty. Uh, so, uh, just as a refresher for the audience, uh, in the law of free speech, there are two main ways by which the government is permitted to restrict speech. There are a certain number of so-called unprotected categories. I mentioned them earlier, fighting words, true threats, uh, incitement, imminent incitement to violence, a bunch of these things. Um, and then outside of those categories, the government can restrict speech so long as it satisfies strict scrutiny, although that's very difficult to, to meet, um, for laws that target the content of speech. So in the Stevens case, uh, which involved videos of dog fights, um, the, uh, government made the argument that the depiction of an, of cruelty to animals that is illegal, where it is, where it's occurring, is an unprotected category. And they said it should be such an unprotected category for the same reason that child pornography is an unprotected category, which is, um, that in order to produce the material, people are engaging in illegal acts and it's very hard for the government to detect those illegal acts directly. So the way that the government can address that is by drying up the market for the end product. Uh, and that is certainly what the court said in, uh, the Ferber case, which is the leading case involving child pornography. Uh, Supreme Court rejects it, and in the course of rejecting it, Chief Justice Roberts makes what I think is just a dishonest claim.

And that claim is that the unprotected categories are not unprotected because they lack value based on some sort of utilitarian balancing. But because historically these were not protected, um, by the law. And so when the framers and Ratifiers adopted the First Amendment containing protection for the freedom of speech, they had in mind only those categories that, that were protected. Now. This just isn't true. If you go back and look at the cases that recognize, uh, and define the boundaries of particular categories, they're all about the value of particular forms of speech and where the government's interest ends and begins and so forth. Uh, and that's especially true of child pornography, which was not a recognized category, you know, until the late 20th century. Uh, and which was based entirely on this same kind of argument as was offered in defense of the, the law at issue in Stevens. Uh, and so I think that, you know, there's a very good argument that this is not valuable and it's the kind of thing where the government can't detect it directly, uh, and so to get at it, you have to dry up the market.

And there was evidence of that. In the period when the law was being enforced, there was less of this stuff being produced. Uh, the court also rejects the argument that the law can satisfy strict scrutiny, and there I think their analysis is somewhat better, that there is some imprecision, et cetera. But I think that the, from the starting point, um, I, I see no reason why this is, you know, you know, this is the sort of thing that a free democratic society needs to protect.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and that would've been a, uh, you know, forgive me if I'm wrong, but, uh, a relatively easy way to, to find, um, that this, this, uh, that this law was constitutional without creating, you know, all sorts of like, crazy precedent and, and getting into... it didn't have the same problems as the other cases we've talked about, that you're opening up some huge, uh, huge can of worms that you don't know how to close. Because it's a very specific category of behavior, the filming of, of, uh, of animal abuse. And, and for those who have forgotten, the law was passed to address, allegedly to address, crush videos where women in high heels crush animals to death.

And some people enjoy watching that. And, but was actually used in this case to prosecute dog fighting videos. So it, it was kind of unfortunate that, that it got tested in a, in a less, uh, I'm not sure it's less hideous, but less, less popular kind of... I mean, crush videos are, are horrifying, like horrifying to almost everybody, whereas dog fighting videos are probably fine with some people.

Michael Dorf: Although I don't think that that would, you know, I mean the, the case arose, so it's a 2010 case. It's not that long after the Michael Vick, uh, publicity. And, you know, it is, somewhat remarkable that the Supreme Court, um, was, you know, out there saying, well, this is okay. You can, you know, we, you I mean, 'cause you could see the headline being Supreme Court okays dog fighting.

That's not exactly what they did. Uh, but there's something like that. And, you know, it's, it's, it's one of a string of three cases from roughly the same period in which the Supreme Supreme Court adopted a very expansive view of free speech, um, in really quite unpopular speech. The other two are, uh, one involving violent video games where they rejected a, uh, California law that, that, uh, forbade their sale to minors without parental consent, which seems like a fairly mild, uh, requirement. Um, and then the other was they rejected on constitutional grounds, civil liability for the Westborough Baptists.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, right, right, right.

Michael Dorf: Who have this horrible practice of, uh, protesting at funerals of, uh, people who died, um, as US service members, um, you know, they would have signs saying, thank God for dead soldiers, uh, because they had this elaborate and homophobic, uh, uh, view about, you know how, uh, the, uh, death of US service members overseas was divine punishment for, um, sin.

Uh, you know, and, and nobody likes the Westborough Baptists, but the Supreme Court, you know, ruled in their favor. Uh, so it's, it's not so much that the court was sort of anti animal in Stevens. I think that during this period they were just, you know, wildly pro free speech, including in ways... you know, and you might say, well, the point of the, of free speech is to protect unpopular speech. Um, you know, none of these cases involves unpopular positions, exactly. I mean, maybe the Westboro Baptists do, but it, it, none of it is contributing to like, you know, democratic debate about what our policy should be. But you know, it's clear that they, that in the course of this, the animals count for, you know, virtually nothing.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah,

Michael Dorf: except Alito.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, one thing, one thing that did remind me of the other case we were talking about, um, in that, uh, you know, slippery, uh, slippery slope argument is that they, they did dwell on the case of hunting videos and they just said, well, this would ban hunting videos. And they seemed to just think, it's so obvious that you wouldn't wanna ban hunting videos that we don't even have to explain why, why that makes it too broad.

Michael Dorf: Yeah, no, that's right. That's like, well, hunting. Of course. That's a

Mariann Sullivan: That's a great thing to do. Hunting videos and there's just for entertainment, I mean, they're not educational or anything, which is where,

Michael Dorf: I suppose it could be for educational if you know, like, this is, this is the best way to murder a deer in the wild.

Mariann Sullivan: But I think that they specifically said they don't have to be educational. They can just be, enter entertainment and obviously we would still not wanna ban them.

Michael Dorf: right.

Mariann Sullivan: Um, all right. Well, we don't have too many minutes left. I know you have a, a, a hard stop. Uh, if there, is there any other particular class you would like to talk about that, that you noted, uh, like really, really brought out some interesting arguments or some participation by the students? Which I, I am sure you're very good at doing, even though I can assure everybody out there, it is the most agonizing thing about teaching.

Like they just sit there like lumps on a log. Maybe they don't in a semi in, in, in your seminars. But, um, what did, did get them engaged? Uh,

Michael Dorf: So, um, we had a really good discussion about the Copenhagen Zoo's call for people to send a along their, uh, uh, dying pets. Uh, and, um, that so I people remember, right? So Copenhagen Zoo actually is, uh, at the forefront of bizarre, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: there, it's very odd. It's very Scandinavian.

Michael Dorf: About 15 years ago, um, there was the controversy over their decision to kill Marius the giraffe,

Mariann Sullivan: right?

Michael Dorf: Be, be, not because there's anything wrong with Marus, uh, but he was not, um, contributing to the genetic diversity of their captive giraffe population. They wanted a, you know, a, a more diverse giraffe, I guess it was DEI for giraffes. Um, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: It was more like he was re a little too closely related to the other giraffes.

Michael Dorf: And, and so they killed him, uh, even though he was, you know, popular with the, the zoo-goers. And this

Mariann Sullivan: He's a giraffe, how could he not be popular?

Michael Dorf: Right? So this created some, uh, outrage and controversy. And apparently, I hadn't remembered this, but we looked this up. They then fed his body to the lions and the other carnivores in the zoo.

Mariann Sullivan: I remember that. Yeah. And they had people watching as they did that, including children.

Michael Dorf: Unbelievable. Um, and, uh, and so more recently they put out this call for people's people to, to donate their animals, uh, near the end of their lives to the zoo, which would then euthanize them they, they said, and then feed them to their carnivores. Uh, and one of the questions we raised was, well, what does it mean to euthanize 'em?

If you, you like the, the humane way to euthanize an animal would be to use some sort of toxin, which would then not be, you would not want to feed to a living animal.

Mariann Sullivan: Can I just add to that too? 'Cause it's my, my, uh, it's a, it's a bit more for me. Um, like euthanized means killing to end suffering, like when it refers to humans. Whereas when it refers to animals, it seems to be killing because it's, they're inconvenient.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. Although I think, right, I think the zoo's call was for aged pets. Uh, or they weren't just, and, and I don't, I don't, there was some question about whether it included cats and dogs, uh, although the exclusion, if it was an exclusion, was arbitrary. Um, so, so yes, I'm not defending the

Mariann Sullivan: But there was some, some nod to the idea that we need to end these lives for the sake of the animal. A nod, maybe not proof. Yeah.

Michael Dorf: Yeah. Um, but, but this, you know, this then led to an interesting discussion about what do we do with carnivores. Uh, and of course the short answer is we don't put them in zoos, but it did raise the question of, um, well, do we have an obligation to the prey animals to protect them from the predator animals? Uh, and how do we balance that? And so, you know, I I, I defended the position that we don't have such an obligation because we're not causing the harm. And, uh, I invoked the, uh, so-called precautionary principle, which says that, you know, if we interfere with nature, we're just as likely to get things wrong as to get things right. Um, although I did for them recall a discussion I had eight or nine years ago with Peter Singer, in which he defended the idea of, you know, trying to give the predators alternative food sources, uh, you know, so you could do, you could do, uh, cultivated meat, for example. Um, but, you know, I, I questioned like, how is that practical, right?

You're gonna, you know, you would have to confine them 'cause you're gonna have to protect the prey animals in some way. Right? You know, the lion is like, oh, great, I get this, uh, uh, lab grown gazelle and now I can go kill that real gazelle. Uh, and so,

Mariann Sullivan: It doesn't seem to solve the problem.

Michael Dorf: Uh, but, but it was, you know, what I found just as a sociological...

Mariann Sullivan: the kind of, it's the kind of rabbit hole. Philosophers fall down all the time. Like we have to, we have to have an answer to everything. I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you...

Michael Dorf: No, I was just gonna say exactly, but it engaged the students who seemed least likely to go vegan, uh, because they could talk and think about it without it implicating their own actions.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. Right. No, that is, that is the kind of question you always, you always end up going to the edges.

Michael Dorf: Right,

Mariann Sullivan: What about if you have rats in the house? Or, um, you know, what do we do with the animals in the zoos? It's, yeah. Uh, because it means you don't have to like, take responsibility. I, I, I think you're absolutely, I mean, I think the only thing I've ever come up with, because you do end up in that conversation, is to say, you know, similarly to what you did, um, that like it's nature and we're not in charge of it and we don't know how to control it.

And we don't understand why, why we live in a, um, animal eat animal world, but we do. And, and so we fix what we can. Uh, and what you can fix is the stop eating factory farm meat. Um, but uh, yeah, that's not always what they wanna hear. Speaking of what they wanna hear, what do you think they got out of it and what did you get out of it?

Michael Dorf: Um, so I do think that the students who were not already vegan, um, uh, which is most of them, uh, were exposed to ideas that they hadn't thought much about and, uh, took them seriously. Uh, I tried as much as possible to be non-judgmental and to sort of keep it light and to sort of keep my sense of humor and all.

So, so I do think it that, um, you know, it's, it wasn't a relentlessly animal rights class, but you couldn't come away from this thi thinking that, oh, I guess it's fine to eat animals. So, so I, I think that, I think that I put, I, I sort of moved the needle on some of them and, you know, all you can do is expose them and, and, and hope that they change on their own. Um, what I got out of it, I think, was a, so for me, it's not as though I hadn't previously thought about constitutional issues in connection with animals.

These are places, you know, I've written about these issues. I've thought a lot about them, uh, you know, for at least the last 10, 15 years. Um, but doing it here, um, explicitly focusing on the constitution, kind of made me, it, it reinforced my view that, uh, the law is at best a blunt and not ideal instrument for moving things along, but it also led me, led me to think, but there might be opportunities here and there to, to, to make some progress. Um, so I was, I was most, um, sort of heartened when I saw students who were not at all vegan sort of making arguments because they saw sort of the stupidity of the arguments on the other side. And, and so I think, I think that was to me, something, you know, valuable.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, you could never tell, I mean, not just in that context, but in any context, you can never tell in the moment whether you've had an impact. Uh, 'cause people don't reveal, don't suddenly say, oh my God, I've been wrong.

Michael Dorf: Right.

Mariann Sullivan: Know? It's, it's starting the wheels turning and I'm sure you did a lot of that.

And, uh, yeah, I agree that the law is a blunt instrument, but I, I don't think we have a better one, um, sadly. Uh, you know, philosophy is also something, it may not be a blunt instrument, but it's not one that you can manage to hit many people over the head with. Whereas law is, is more in the real world. Philosophy, you have to actually rely on convincing people of things that they don't even want to hear.

Michael Dorf: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, I think you mentioned that, uh, in your interview last week, you're talking about like, you know, the, how we went down this, this philosophy road thinking we would, that that's, uh, how we would persuade people. Right. Um, but,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I, I repeat myself all the time.

Michael Dorf: No, it's just, yeah, no, no.

But it, but it, right. Um, like the fact that it worked on us, we're a self-selecting group of weird people, uh, doesn't mean it works on everybody. Now, I do think that, that law students are a little bit closer in that they're used to thinking through arguments, um, in a way that sort of, the average person isn't.

And so I think that appealing to them intellectually has a greater likelihood of success than with the average person. Uh, but you still need to, you know, give them the vegan food to show them that it's possible and all. And,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Michael Dorf: We did that.

Mariann Sullivan: And the more people who who get it, the more people who get it. So every, every step helps. I'm excited that you're teaching this course. I hope you're gonna continue to teach it in the future. Uh, and, uh, I thank you so much for I, I wish we had another hour to talk about it, but I know we don't, so, uh

Michael Dorf: I will say one last thing, which is a number of students expressed regret that you're no longer teaching the animal law class here.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, really?

Michael Dorf: They said, oh, we wish I, I really wanted to take animal law, but it's not offered anymore.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, well, yeah. I, I feel bad about it too. I also feel great about it.

Michael Dorf: No, I understand. The, the, the drive is a pain.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, the drive is a pain. Also, you know, you're the extrovert. I'm the introvert. Teaching takes a lot outta me. Um, all right. Thank you so much for joining us.

And thank you out there for joining us. Before I let you go, just one moment to remind you that we're in the middle of our end of your fundraising, uh, push.

And we are pushing, I admit it, but this is when we raise all of our money for the year, pretty much. And, and if you're not already part of the flock, you can join as a member with options starting at $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year. Or you can just go to ourhenhouse.org/support and donate whatever you can, even if it's what you think is a small amount, believe me, it counts a lot. Because from now, until the end of the year, it will be tripled, and that will not happen again. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Michael, for joining us. And don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, uh, on your favorite pod catcher or on YouTube.

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