Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Klar, who raises grass-fed Herefords and Corriedale sheep in Irasburg. He is an attorney admitted to the bar in Connecticut.
[T]he Vermont Constitution was the first formal constitution enacted in America. Within decades, as America undertook its novel experiment with individual freedoms, the interpretation of both state and federal constitutions began to endure the quite understandable tension between a strict versus a liberal interpretation. As time has passed, it has been harder to delineate what would have been the “framers’ intent” in view of modern complexities of technology and morality. Our constitutions’ “framers” could not have anticipated our world, even if H.G. Wells had written for Poor Richard’s Almanac.
But rather than dismiss these documents as anachronistic artifacts (as so many seem now to do), we must discern instead that they have never been more relevant. Vermont employed its unique Constitution to forge rights of gays to civil unions in Baker v. State; hardly any more the framers’ intent than the United States Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Both entailed applying enduring ideas to current realities, with quite disparate outcomes.
The United States Supreme Court has provided constitutional protection to large corporations to patent GMO organisms (Monsanto v. Bowman); the State of Vermont is engaging with those very forces in its effort to impose GMO labeling requirements to inform and protect consumers. No-knock warrants, traffic stops, pipelines, cell and wind towers, and a myriad of other societal challenges continue to reveal how very thoughtful those “framer” folks were. How we interpret and apply their ideas will shape the world our children inhabit.
A common tension in the “evolution” of our constitutional jurisprudence is seen between large corporate interests and consumers; and between the large federal government, and local or individual autonomy. Since 9/11, these tensions have increased, and there are powerful forces pushing for integrated federal oversight of every detail of our food supply, in the name of national security. Coinciding suspiciously with this initiative is the consolidation of our nation’s food production and processing into a very few massive corporations, which are losing market share to the explosion of consumer demand for fresh local meats and produce. These local and newcomer farmers are satisfying a consumer sentiment much like the micro-breweries (led by Vermont) did 30 years ago: and those micro-breweries took market share in the same manner.
Vermont has enacted legislation banning seed banks unless they comply with onerous rules, in the name of security against terrorism. Nearly 95 percent of heirloom vegetable varieties have been permanently lost, GMO varieties of seeds can be freely introduced without oversight or registration, most food-borne illness is carried by industrial produce: and the state won’t permit the local library to circulate seeds through the community. What would the framers say?
Vermont employed its unique Constitution to forge rights of gays to civil unions in Baker v. State; hardly any more the framers’ intent than the United States Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Meat from China and other countries can no longer be labeled with country-of-origin information. Ninety percent of factory beef contains antibiotics or hormones, or both: new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are proliferating in confinement operations, including in the swine, chicken, and beef “industries.” And now comes the State of Vermont, at the behest of the United States Food and Drug Administration, to enact laws that regulate the longstanding on-farm slaughter practices of Vermont farmers. This is a legislative solution to a non-problem: no one has been made ill by any on-farm Vermont slaughter.
The male bass in rivers are laying eggs, E. coli levels increase, and it is clear that essentially all of the water contamination is from large agricultural ventures — the very confinement dairies that have been promoted by decades of state regulations that favored large “efficient” operations over small family farms. Now Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (VAAFM) is drafting new required agricultural practices based on directives of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These require small farms to register annually, whether or not they border water (at least in last draft). They impose a 25-foot setback from surface water on all small farmers.
Allow me to make a few observations about these rules:
I drove through Enosburg a few days ago. I saw cornfields plowed to river’s edge for mile after mile. Ought not the VAAFM and the EPA enforce existing regulations against the confinement dairies they spawned before crushing the tiny remnant of hillside family farms we retain?
Why, under the pretense of overseeing water quality, would the government seek to regulate beekeepers who are not anywhere near water? What would the framers say?
When a utility takes or buys a 50 feet easement through a farmer’s pasture, it must pay for it, and typically the land can go back into grazing or cropping use. These new regulations threaten to command farmers to fence their cows out of pasture areas 25 feet from every stream, without compensation. The framers put a taking clause in both constitutions for good reason.
Both the water and slaughter regulations impose new and onerous burdens on small farms without addressing the health threats facing industrial production. Our nation imports more foreign food, and inspects less, every year. What constitutional right does government have to interfere with a local healthy food supply? Do we have a “right to farm” in Vermont?
If the State of Vermont appropriates to itself the power to oversee the growing of marijuana, simultaneously imposing incarceration on any citizen that cultivates that evil weed, is that constitutional? Can it grow tomatoes and incarcerate its tomato competition? No one has ever died of marijuana overdose: home brewing of the killer alcohol is legal. What would the framers say? (Oh wait – we know full well what they would say: Washington and Jefferson both grew huge acreages of hemp, and strongly advocated its proliferation).
Annette Smith, a layperson who volunteers for grassroots wind opponents, is being criminally investigated by the Vermont Attorney General for the unauthorized practice of law. When corporate interests gain access to the levers of power, they use those levers to quash resistance – to stifle free speech like the political speech of Annette Smith. I am an attorney, not admitted to practice in Vermont. Will I be criminally investigated for writing this article?
Our constitutions have never been more relevant. The insights of those who drafted them have never been more important. If government could be trusted to observe and preserve the rights of citizens, we would not need such documents or ideas. When the VAAFM or the EPA do the bidding of federal or corporate masters, they are restricted by those enduring concepts of federalism and of government restraint. The spirit of our forefathers is still nurtured in these hills: the Vermont Constitution is perhaps the strongest state constitution in America. It is up to us and our children whether we want it to be dead, or alive.
