There is no easy answer to the question whether there is a principled libertarian argument in favor of animal cruelty laws, which Jim Henley asks. Acknowledging that there is also no easy answer to what "libertarian argument" means, I think the problem can be fairly stated as: If you want people to be free to do whatever makes them happy as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's right to do the same thing, whose rights are being circumscribed when you force dogs to fight one another, then drown or hang the losers?

If there were an easy answer, people a lot smarter than me, like Megan McArdle, Julian Sanchez and James Joyner, would have figured it out by now. But I think an intermediate question is a lot easier to answer. What reason is there, if any, to treat dogs differently from other property? The easy answer is what you call what Michael Vick and his buddies did. There is no such thing as "house cruelty" or "42 inch high definition plasma TV cruelty" or "mint condition X-Men #94 cruelty." We don't call it "animal cruelty" because that's how it's written in the law, which would beg the question. It wouldn't be against the law to be cruel to animals if it weren't possible to be cruel to animals.

But that sounds like an unsatisfying gotcha. How about this: Animals share something with us most property doesn't -- life. (And faces!) Ask 100 people to make a list of their most cherished rights, and the right to life will appear near the top of every one. I don't think it disfigures a Platonically ideal libertarian scheme to enforce a respect for life.

I hate to couch this in terms of "respect for life," because we all know what that's usually a code phrase for, but if possible, I want to set that aside. If you agree that criminal law should be used to defend life and exact punishment when it's taken, it's not a huge leap to apply that -- to a reasonable extent -- to things besides humans which have life.

By no means are humans equivalent to dogs equivalent to praying mantises in terms of the degree to which we might enforce a minimum respect for life. That doesn't defeat the point, it makes it just like the fact an emancipated adult has a greater right to liberty and autonomy than a 17 year old than a six year old than a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees have no liberty, at least none you could reasonably codify and defend by force of law. Chimpanzees do have life, and the long tail of the scale continues on longer down the Y axis when it comes to life. Or it could. Couldn't it?

Whether something is alive or not is important, but not determinative, of course. You want to feed people, encourage commerce, science and medical advancement, and keep the lawn looking nice. But even under libertarianism, there are very few bright-line either A or B scenarios anyone can successfully defend. And we humans have a long history of imposing and/or enhancing punishments when an offense is particularly depraved -- or cruel, if you prefer. If your criminal law is set up to protect life, it might proscribe drowning and hanging dogs who don't fight well, and not shooting them when they're rabid, or putting them down when they're old.