Your Winter 2014 cover feature titled “Thought for Food” reflects the activities of the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Food Law Lab. Congratulations. It took HLS a long time to come to the realization that this was an important part of the legal education.
By comparison, back in 1955, as a quizzical 1L, I would ask teachers at HLS why there was no course or seminar on food and the law. “Fooood?!” exclaimed one professor in astonishment at the very question. Their replies boiled down to this: Food law had not developed either in a regulatory or judicial sense to a level of sufficient complexity to warrant becoming a sufficient intellectual challenge for the students. “Unlike tax law,” another respondent declared.
Makes us think about what may be missing today from the law school’s curriculum and culture.