Legal Commentary

The New York Times today has an interesting column by Ariel Kaminer about farms that "allow[ ] customers to choose their animals, to witness their slaughter and even, for those so inclined, to wield the sharpened knife. It?s all part of the broader cultural effort to escape the climate-controlled, linoleum-lined artificiality of supermarket shopping, in which meat magically appears all ready for your oven and animals are characters in children?s storybooks."  

The comments on the column are mostly about vegetarianism, meat-eating, feeling connected to your actions instead of being a mindless consumer, etc.  But I confess that my first thought upon reading the column was that for a certain class of reasonably wealthy and well-educated Americans, morality -- or, more to the point, the experience of morality -- has itself become something between a tourist experience and a luxury good.  I won't belabor the point, but its applications to law, and to the kinds of legal issues that attract the most attention in the legal academy, seem boundless.  

(Hat tip for the title: The Chronicles of Riddick, of course.)