JUST OBEY GOOD LAWS? Wednesday's Chicago Tribune had a front-page story on a flagrant act of civil disobedience suggesting Chicago's foie gras ban might not be enforceable.

Chicago's immediate reaction to a city ordinance banning foie gras--the French dish made from the livers of force-fed ducks and geese--was to embrace the gray goo like never before, in flights of culinary imagination.

Rhetoric and pate abounded on the first day of the City Council's ban, as restaurateurs and gourmands openly flouted the prohibition--cultured, giddy, goose-liver-fueled acts of defiance.

Worse yet for the prohibitionists, they had a good time while flouting the law.

At BJ's Market & Bakery, a soul food restaurant on Stony Island Avenue, a sign placed next to the cash register declared foie gras the special of the day, and those who had it proclaimed it delicious.

"I've had regular liver and it doesn't taste like that. I hate to say it, but it tastes like chicken," said manager Steven Jones, 22. "I tried it and I thought it was pretty good."

At Connie's Pizza on Archer Avenue, employees wedged a foie gras pizza on a table display between a pork cutlet sandwich special and a bucket of Miller Lite bottles.

His table shaking with laughter, 54-year-old Jerry Stout of Naperville pronounced that "it tastes like expensive liverwurst. But I better not say that, they might try to ban that too."

Ban Braunschweiger with a bunch of expatriate Prussians a Hiawatha ride away? (Well, maybe the damage has already been done. "Noodled geese" are a German tradition too.)

That got me thinking about yesterday's mini-dissertation on viewpoint diversity (sorry, Professor Munger, not enough time to write a short post this evening either) and I had a bit of time to download and skim Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" over lunch (no pate shops near campus, sorry) which one of the Inside Higher Ed essayists endorsed, highlighting "Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?" as a passage for further discussion. Sure, that passage appeals to the mind-set that would "interrogate the power structure" to discover its desire to suppress any threats to its continuance, and sure, "Civil Disobedience" is an abolitionist tract. But it's an odd sort of abolitionist tract that also argues,

Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.

Warm-up question: has the Chicago foie gras ban put off longer the day when the last goose is noodled, if in fact the practice of noodling geese is a barbarous relic? Harder question: is Mr Thoreau arguing that government policies that stop compelling people not to trade with each other (segregated schools and lunch counters) by instituting specific compulsions (intact busing and quotas) put off longer the day when people can interact with other people?

I read Thoreau further. "Must the citizen, ever for a moment, in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?" No collectivist tract this.

Possible exam question: Can the proprietors of Chicago restaurants find an intellectual argument for their pate parties in "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience?"

Others have been thinking about different dimensions of the protest. Marquette Warrior notes a potential separation-of-powers case in which the Chicago City Council has exceeded its authority. (Be careful what you ask for, such a litigation might lead to a nationwide prohibition of pate, and your Braunschweiger and my double bratwursts will be next.)

Hit and Run's Katherine Mangu-Ward also celebrates the civil disobedience. But again, one has to be careful.

A few enterprising chefs have already figured out ways to work around the sloppily-worded ban, while they wait for the outcome of their pending lawsuit against the city. Chef Michael Tsonton of Copperblue explains:

I'm usually serving the foie gras with some potatoes, salad and brioche. If we cannot sell the foie gras, I will be giving it away complimentary, and I will be charging $15.99 for the potatoes and salad and brioche.

Careful where you go with those blue-plate specials. In my regulated industries course outline is a case called Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502 (1933) in which a grocer's bundling of a bottle of milk with a loaf of bread was successfully prosecuted as a subterfuge to evade a minimum price regulation enacted to support dairy farm incomes. The court held, "The use of private property and the making of private contracts are, as a general rule, free from governmental interference; but they are subject to public regulation when the public need requires. P. 523." The rest is left to the reader as an exercise.