But first, a greeting, and a thank you to the Overlawyered boys for inviting me to guest-blog this week. I’m Ron Coleman, proprietor of the LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION® blog on trademark, copyright and free speech law, and a contributor to Dean’s World and other things. In short, I love practicing law so much that I spend most of the day blogging.
So much for self-promotion (if you can call it that) — now to the promotion of animal cruelty — it’s all the rage, after all:
A new state law against fighting roosters violates a treaty that ended the Mexican-American War, a cockfighting association claims in a lawsuit.
The New Mexico Gamefowl Breeders Association and six businessmen argued that the law infringes on rights protected under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which made New Mexico a U.S. territory.
The lawsuit contends the treaty guarantees civil, political and religious rights, privileges and immunities to the people of New Mexico.
Many of the association’s 2,000 members “are devoted to rural lifestyles, of which gamefowl breeding and-or participating in gamefowl shows and fights are, in New Mexico, long-standing, culturally bound and significant activities,” the lawsuit said.
Wow, some treaty! It guarantees the right to — well, to do what, exactly? Let’s ask the Humane Society:
Cockfighting is a centuries-old blood sport in which two or more specially bred birds, known as gamecocks, are placed in an enclosure to fight, for the primary purposes of gambling and entertainment. A cockfight usually results in the death of one of the birds; sometimes it ends in the death of both. A typical cockfight can last anywhere from several minutes to more than half an hour.
The birds, even those who do not die, suffer in cockfights. The birds cannot escape from the fight, regardless of how exhausted or injured they become. Common injuries include punctured lungs, broken bones, and pierced eyes. Such severe injuries occur because the birds’ legs are usually fitted with razor-sharp steel blades or with gaffs, which resemble three-inch-long, curved ice picks. These artificial spurs are designed to puncture and mutilate.
Nice. And, best of all, tanto auténtico! What judge could resist such a rootsy appeal to heartless blood lust? Plus there’s dinero at stake, too.
Okay, so what’s the legal theory again? Oh, yeah, that’s right: This novel civil right — the right to engage in any “long-standing, culturally bound and significant activities” — is enshrined in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Well, here’s the Treaty: You see the clause guaranteeing the inalienable right to “long-standing, culturally bound and significant activities”?
No? Okay, well how about just the piece about roosters? Any specifications for ice picks?
Me neither. The only thing I remember about the unlikely juxtaposition of ice picks and Mexico is a certain unpleasantness involving some murderous Bolsheviks. Now, we saw then that “breaking a few eggs” can be unpleasant, but these poor chickens deserve better. Plaintiffs in this lawsuit, however, don’t.
UPDATE: Wow. There’s more to this civil right than I thought!
10 Comments
That’s right.
Once we get rid of cockfighting and bullfighting, we can stop dog racing, horse racing, pig racing and pigeon racing.
In fact, after we close down all the factory farms and ban meat-eating, we can finally get around to prohibiting private ownership of animals – oh, I’m sorry, I mean non-human peer species.
Hey, Frank, there is an argument to be made as to any given point on the spectrum between treating animals at least as well as humans (PETA) and like inanimate stuff.
This post isn’t about them, however. Though it is self-evident to me that the plaintiffs in this case are at a point on that spectrum that is not morally justifiable, the point here is not whether or not the policy enacted by the legislature, forbidding cockfighting, is the correct one. It is, rather, that it is a legislative one.
Sorry, Ron, but your allusion to “ice pick” combined with “Bolsheviks,” undoubtedly referring to Trotsky’s murder, is incorrect. The implement was acutally an “ice axe”, which is totally different from a pick and a lot more lethal.
Ah, Barry, you take a “literary” device stretched to, if not beyond, all reasonable limits — and then demand accuracy, as well?
Icy your point, however.
I’ve lived in New Mexico most of my life. I’m proud of my state, in a my-family-may-be-twisted-but-they’re-my-family kind of way.
I am appalled by the thought that cockfighting is part of my “cultural heritage.”
But — and this is not to excuse the cockfighting, merely to explain why this argument has any traction at all — the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has scriptural status with much of the community here. Regardless of what it actually says.
Does anyone know what cocks do to one another in the wild?
Walter, I can’t say for certain, but I would think that wild cocks would fight each other, like any other male bird, but not to the point of death. And they certainly wouldn’t strap on metal barbs.
Well, Mike, maybe they would use ice picks, but not ice axes, that’s for sure!
…Little Jerry Seinfeld would tear those ice picks off in a heart-beat.
Well, here’s the Treaty: You see the clause guaranteeing the inalienable right to “long-standing, culturally bound and significant activities”?
Maybe “the title and rights of Mexican citizens”, as guaranteed in article 8, includes the right to cockfighting. In that case, all they need is to file the case in the name of a Mexican living in the region transferred to the USA by this treaty, who explicitly chose to remain a Mexican citizen rather than becoming a USA citizen within one year but stay in the USA.
The catch? That Mexican citizen would have to have be at least 159 years old and still living in New Mexico.