Legal News

?The Price is Right?: Barker Gives $1M for Animal Rights Law at UVA

By Dan Slater

Game show host Bob Barker during a live taping of ‘The Price Is Right’ at the CBS Studios in Los Angeles, Oct. 31, 2006. (AP/Damian Dovarganes)

Fans of “The Price is Right,” the longest running daytime game show on television, may remember host Bob Barker’s signature sign-off: “Help control the pet population; have your pet spayed or neutered.” Barker, also a longtime host of the Miss Universe Pageant, quit the pageant in 1987 when those in charge refused to stop giving away fur coats as prizes.

Now Barker (not a lawyer), who retired last year, is keeping his animal rights drive alive, with a $1 million gift to the University of Virginia to establish an animal law program at its law school. The AP reports that, since retiring, Barker has donated millions to establish animal-rights curricula at law schools nationwide, including those at Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Duke, Northwestern and Stanford and UCLA.

The Bob Barker Animal Rights Program at UVA, to be led by UVA law prof Mimi Riley, will offer its first animal law course in the fall. Here’s the press release from UVA.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).