FLACO AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

 

Flaco The Owl. 

Two topics to start off the week. The first is that Falco, a Eurasian Owl that had escaped the Central Park Zoo (as a law student we signed on to work on the case circa late 1970s to shut the old zoo down) died in NYC last week. 

Like many New Yorkers, we were captivated by Flaco, who was born in captivity. He was freed last year by what the Zoo called an "act of vandalism" but about which we cheered. There were concerns that Flaco would starve but he soon proved to be an adept hunter of rats in Central Park. The Twitter (now X) feeds documenting Flaco are worth a look. 

Like all New Yorkers, Flaco had  wanderlust. He decamped to the Lower East Side last spring. The speculation was that he, like many of his fellow New Yorkers, was looking for love in the Village. He then returned to his favourite tree in Central Park, where he occasionally ventured into the Upper West Side, but like us, he apparently found it boring, and always returned home. 

We are going to say this one time: Animals belong in the wild and not in Zoos. Period. End of discussion. You disagree? Go live in a cage for a year and let us know how you like it. 

The second issue for the day is the handwringing by Constitutional Law Professors over the teaching of Con Law now that the Court is populated by second level intellects of a certain political persuasion. Oh what to do? 

The NY Times article is here. 

When did you lose faith in the Court? 

For us we could say it was the opinion in Wickard v. Filburn, holding that a farmer could not consume the wheat he grew because of the greater good (altruistic collectivism in its most basic form).  Or maybe it was Buck v. Bell upholding the forced sterilization of people with diminished mental capacity, which caused Justice Homes to write in 1927 that  "Three generations of idiots are enough."  Who said only the Nazis had a monopoly on eugenics?

By the time the Court decided Bush v. Gore and stopped the counting of votes for President we were done, at least in the belief that the reasons behind the decisions were purely legal. 

And we predict it will even get worse. Our Governor selects Judges recommended by a conservative society who has lost its roots. Our wanna be judges fall all over themselves to ignore morality, common sense, and reason, and only employ a careful parsing of what idiot lawmakers in Tallahassee wrote (Unless its a pesky death penalty precedent, and then it's "Out with the old and in with the Right" ). 

Sorry but the death of Flaco just has us totally bummed.