As I mentioned, I’m now studying for the bar exam. Like many if not most law students, I paid for a $3,000+ bar review course that is offered by a company called Bar/Bri. It reviews the areas of the law that the bar exam tests, and takes about two months to complete. In the course of his Constitutional Law II lecture, Professor Paul Lisnek injected some rather disappointing and totally unnecessary anti-hunting bias:In the process of discussing the constitutionality of charging out of state hunters more for a license than in-state hunters, Professor Lisnek repeatedly referred to hunting as “elk murder,” and went on to say “elk hunting, or murder as I think of it.”
Firstly, I find this to be a distraction from the lecture which I paid quite a bit of money to hear. I signed up to hear Professor Lisnek’s approximately 6 hour summary of constitutional law as it applies to the bar exam – not his unsolicited opinion on hunting. It was completely unnecessary for him to inject that bit of bias into the lecture. It is bad enough when a law professor takes one side of an issue, rather than sticking to the law and fostering debate on the part of his or her students. It strikes me as worse when a law professor does this in a lecture setting like Bar/Bri, where no questions can be asked during the lecture, and where the recorded lecture is listened to by thousands of students who hear only the professor’s viewpoints.
Secondly, I would like to note that he offered no comment on other contentious issues such as abortion, racist hate speech, flag burning, gay marriage, or assisted suicide. Indeed, when discussing the constitutionality of laws criminalizing the creation and possession of child pornography, Lisnek didn’t take time from the lecture to condemn the individuals who exploit children.
Finally, I would note that I am not a hunter, and have never been hunting. I own few guns suitable for hunting purposes, since my main reason for gun ownership is self defense. My thoughts on the unfair bias against hunting, from that perspective, can be seen in this article.