Foie Gras is a yummy, juicy, and fat duck liver. California bans this delicious feast because producers must force-feed duck or geese so that their livers become artificially enlarged. To make the liver juicy and fatty, farmers usually stuff a pipe down a bird's neck to fatten them up as quickly as possible. The geese have to be so fat to force their livers to be fatter and juicier than normal, skinny geese. Animal rights activists lobbied the California senate to disallow the sale of this product.

In this episode of Run It By My Lawyer, Joe Samo details California's prohibition of foie gras and how farmers challenged the law on the grounds that California does not have the Constitutional authority to ban meat that the federal law allows. The ensuing litigation through the federal courts, which was appealed to the Supreme Court, determined the extent of authority a state has versus laws enacted by the federal government. These laws and divisions between the state and federal government date back to the Civil War, and this case is an example of how states and the federal government still battle over the power to legislate the citizens' actions.

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