I'm disappointed in my statist Supremes. Reuters reports that today the U.S. Supreme Court upheld without comment a Florida Supreme Court ruling barring two Fort Lauderdale ambulance chasers (er, personal injury attorneys) from advertising themselves as pit bulls. A TV ad showed a spike-collared pit bull with their firm's logo, and displayed the telephone number 1-800-PIT-BULL.

The Florida high court must have felt the connection was demeaning to pit bulls (LOL). Actually:

The Florida Supreme Court ruled last year that the advertisements "demean all lawyers and thereby harm both the legal profession and the public's trust and confidence in our system of justice." It said the appropriate sanctions for attorneys John Robert Pape and Marc Andrew Chandler were public reprimands and required attendance at an advertising workshop.

A court-ordered advertising workshop? Grounds for reversal right there, I'd say.

They appealed to the Supreme Court. Rodney Smolla, the University of Richmond law school dean, acknowledged in the appeal that "a conflict over whether a lawyer may use the image of a pit bull to advertise might at first seem trifling." But the law professor, an expert on the First Amendment, told the justices that the state's ban on such advertising involved substantial constitutional, free-speech issues. "It may well be that many American lawyers, including members of the court, would not choose to present themselves to consumers by conjuring an association with pit bulls," Smolla wrote. "But under our First Amendment principles," he added, "we assign the management of good taste to the forces of the marketplace, not the forces of government."

I'll say. Besides, don't the judges understand? Pit-bull lawyers aren't inherently malevolent. There are good pit bull lawyers and bad pit bull lawyers. It all depends on their breeding, training and environment.

But the slippery slope argument of the Florida Bar apparently had staying power.

"If the Bar allows lawyers to use pit bulls, what...next: sharks and alligators?" asked Barry Richard, the Tallahassee lawyer that represented the Bar.

I guess this means that attorneys can't bill themselves as rabid ferrets, either.

As for Pape and Chandler, their Web site shows a phone number of 1-800-748-2855. Which, if you want to pull out your Nokia for a hot minute, you'll see still spells..........

TECHNORATI TAGS: U.S. SUPREME COURT, LAWYER ADS, PIT BULLS, FLORIDA, JOHN ROBERT PAPE, MARC ANDREW CHANDLER, FIRST AMENDMENT