Dead Dogs: Breed bans, euthanasia, and preemptive justice

This is a powerful and thought-provoking article from the Boston Review about “pit bulls,” prejudice, breed bans, dog law, euthanasia, “humane” societies and animal control, dog fighting, and thinly veiled racism.

http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/dayan.php

Brief excerpt below. Visit the link to read the whole article.

Dead Dogs: Breed bans, euthanasia, and preemptive justice

Colin Dayan
MARCH/APRIL 2010

…The seizures, detentions, and exterminations of pit bulls—sanctioned by laws in many states—expose the statutory logic for making preemptive justice constitutionally permissible: canine profiling supplies the terms for inclusion and ostracism, and even the suspension of due process rights. No criminal conviction of the owner is required for state seizure and destruction of property. In other words, the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the government from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” can be suspended for the public good without evidence, without trial, by classification alone.

In legal rationales, realities are created. Old inequalities and radical discrimination are repackaged in unexpected forms. In breed-specific legislation, the taint and incapacity of the disenfranchised live on. At a time when our government is labeling certain persons as threats—alleged terrorists, enemy aliens, illegal immigrants, ordinary people who want to get on airplanes—we need to ask how the seizure and destruction of dogs deemed contraband becomes a medium for the intimidation and debasement of humans in turn. Who should suffer deprivation without redress so that we can live in reasonable—safe and secure—consensus? And who gets to decide?…