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Swiss to Vote on Giving Animals Legal Rights, Including the Right to Have a Government Lawyer if the Animal Cannot Afford One

Tomorrow the citizens of Switzerland will vote on whether to give all Swiss animals increased legal rights, including the right to be represented by an attorney.  I’m not kidding!  Switzerland currently gives  its animals more protections that perhaps any other country in the world.  If the referendum passes, all of Switzerland’s cantons (territorial divisions of the country similar to a city or county) will be required to pay for lawyers to represent animals.  Proponents of the new law say that if a person who has been accused of mistreating an animal is able to hire an attorney then the abused animal (the victim) should also be represented by a lawyer.  Does that mean that if a Swiss dog bites and injures a person, can the injured victim sue the dog who would have a court appointed lawyer and if the victim prevails in court, would the dog be liable for damages that would then be paid by the Swiss government?

Here are some eye-popping current requirements of Swiss animal law:

  • Before acquiring a dog, the prospective owner(s) must take a course on dogs that lasts four hours.
  • If an animal breed is social, i.e., needs companionship, the owner(s) of that type of animal must also have at least other animal of the same type so that the animals will have a companion.  Animals that must have companions include fish, birds and the ever popular yaks.
  • Fish aquariums and cages for birds are required to have not less than one side that is opaque so that the fish or bird feels safe.
  • You cannot simply kill a sick fish by throwing it in the trash or flushing it down the toilet, you must whack it with a killing head shot or poison it in water and  clove oil dissolved in alcohol.
  • Perps found guilty of cruelty to an animal can be sent to the big house for as much as three years.

Let’s hope that Congress and the U.S. trial lawyers don’t hear about the Swiss animal laws because if they do, we’ll have similar laws here.  Giving U.S. animals a right to a lawyer will put dollar signs in the eyes of the trial lawyers and give a lot of currently unemployed lawyers a job as animal rights specialists.  I can also see a boom in much needed animal rights seminars, books, tapes and law blogs.

Update:  By a huge margin, the Swiss voters rejected the animal rights law.

Law Professor With Too Much Free Time Writes Scholarly Law Review Article on Middle Finger Law

Finally we have a law review article about a legal issue that might interest lay people.  Ira P. Robbins, the Barnard T. Welsh Scholar and a Professor of Law and Justice, at the Washington College of Law of American University published an article in the University of California, Davis Law Review called “Digitus Impudicus:  The Middle Finger and the Law.”   The 83 page article contains everything you wanted to know and more about the legalities of flipping the bird.  I cannot wait until the movie comes out.  The preamble to the article says:

“a number of recent cases demonstrate that those who use the middle finger in public run the risk of being stopped, arrested, prosecuted, fined, and even incarcerated under disorderly conduct or breach-of-peace statutes and ordinances. . . . the pursuit of criminal sanctions for use of the middle finger infringes on First Amendment rights, violates fundamental principles of criminal justice, wastes valuable judicial resources, and defies good sense.”

I learn something new everyday.  I’ve been worried about the loss of freedom caused by the food police, the toy police,  the noise police, the clown mask police, the elementary school sexual harassment police,  the snowball police, the elementary school no-touching the opposite sex police, the elementary school doodling police, the light rail police, the elementary school science project police, the advertising police and just today the billboard police.  I did not realize that our freedom is also being threatened by the middle finger police.

Tampa Devoid of Crime so Police Arresting People Wearing Clown Masks in Public

The Tampa, Florida, law enforcement agencies must not have enough crime because they recently arrested a teenage boy for walking along a public highway while wearing a clown mask.  A sheriff’s deputy spotted the perp and followed him for a while until backup from the Tampa police department arrived to help make the arrest.  I hope we can watch the arrest on the TV show “Cops.”  It must have been a very intense and scary time for the deputy who had to follow the clown without any backup.  The dude was arrested for violating a 1951 law intended to prevent KKK members from being on the streets in the hood while wearing their hoods.  The clown was charged with two misdemeanors and released on $750 bail.

1995 Newsweek Article Completely Wrong on Its Predictions About the Internet

Clifford Stoll, author of “Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway” wrote an article published in Newsweek in which he makes a lot of predictions about the internet that are completely wrong.  It’s funny now to read about the things he said would never happen on the internet, but which have happened in a big way.  For example, he said few people would ever use the internet for shopping, telecommuting, multimedia classrooms, virtual communities,  interactive libraries,  Mr. Stoll said the visionaires incorrectly predicted that:

“Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. . . . Baloney.  Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? . . . . Try reading a book on disc. . . .  And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach.  Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet.  Uh, sure.”

To be fair, he was not alone in his predictions that the internet would never amount to much.  In the early 1990s I ran a four phone line bulletin board system (BBS) that was an early version of the internet, but limited by direct computer modem to computer modem phone line connections.  I remember going to a national convention of BBS sysops in the early 1990s where I attended a session at which a panel of speakers in the know told the audience not to waste time with the internet, but to keep investing in BBSs.  That session probably delayed my movement to the internet a few years.

13 Strange Taxes

Shrinkage is Good describes thirteen weird taxes from around the world.  They are: witchcraft, weird baby names, cow flatulence, playing cards, forced smoking, tax-exempt sex toys, urine, hats, beards, prostitution, porn, illegal drugs and bribery.

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