At The Regulatory Review, Prof. Michael S. Knoll shares his insights on a recent Supreme Court decision that is “about much more than porkchops.”
In National Pork Council v. Ross, the Supreme Court upheld a California law on the humane treatment of pigs.
At The Regulatory Review, Michael S. Knoll, Theodore K. Warner Professor of Law and Professor of Real Estate, and Ruth Mason of the University of Virginia School of Law explore how the case “involves weighty constitutional issues about the power of the states to regulate activity within their borders.”
Before the decision was handed down, Knoll and Mason co-authored “Is the Biggest Supreme Court Case This Term About Bacon?,” also published at The Regulatory Review, exploring the potential ramifications of the Court’s decision.
Knoll is the Co-Director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy, and his recent research includes writings on sovereign wealth funds, private equity, international tax arbitrage, and the impact of the corporate income tax on the competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry. He is an insightful commentator on how income tax laws affect business and investment decisions and a creative proponent of how those laws could be redesigned.
From The Regulatory Review:
Law students frequently find the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dormant Commerce Clause doctrine confusing. That is no surprise given the sharp disagreement over that doctrine among seasoned practitioners, academics, and even judges. And the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross did little to bring clarity to that critically important area of the law.
In narrow terms, the Court in National Pork upheld a California law that prohibited the sale of whole pork from the offspring of breeding sows confined in a manner that California residents consider to be cruel. The case, however, is about much more than pork chops. It involves weighty constitutional issues about the power of the states to regulate activity within their borders. The case also concerns the limits on those powers when a state’s laws interfere with the ability of other states to regulate within their borders—or when those laws undercut the national marketplace… .