«We can`t talk about the pizza law without addressing the elephant in the room: there`s only one previous ruling on this issue, and it doesn`t look good for Chicago. Justice Antonin Scalia profoundly undermined pizza jurisprudence in January 2011 when he told California Lawyer magazine, «I think [New York pizza] is. infinitely better than Chicago pizza. You know those deep pizzas – it`s not a pizza. That`s fine, but. Call it tomato pie or something like that. I am a traditionalist, what can I tell you? It paralyzes us. Currently, not only is the deep dish not a pizza, but the vast majority of pizzas produced in the world are not pizzas either. Legally, we`ve all unknowingly eaten open grilled cheese sandwiches all our lives, under the false impression that we`ve enjoyed a melting slice of pizza. The question then arises as to whether this legal definition is really useful.

If nothing is pizza, isn`t everything pizza? This is where linguistics could help. The first point to make in favor of the indictment in Skeptics v. Deep Dish is that, unfortunately, there is a legal precedent for claiming that the deep dish is actually not pizza. Since the law is necessarily beholden to authority, Deep Dish has an uphill battle in the courts, because we must first challenge this precedent if we want to bring this case before a jury. Ward explains: But the story doesn`t end there. Ward notes that the European Union granted Neapolitan pizza the legal status of «traditional speciality guaranteed» in 2010. It`s pretty much a trademark for the food and beverage industry, setting standards for how certain traditional foods and beverages can be prepared — as a more intense version of restrictions that prevent wineries from calling a champagne sparkling wine if the wine wasn`t made from champagne grapes. Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are usually made with tomatoes and mozzarella. They can be made with ingredients such as San Marzano tomatoes, which grow in the volcanic plains south of Vesuvius, and mozzarella di bufala Campana, made from the milk of water buffaloes raised semi-wild in the marshes of Campania and Lazio (this mozzarella is protected by its own European designation of origin). According to Ward, anyone familiar with the Scalia Supreme Court`s previous opinions should not be surprised to hear this.

Scalia was known to be a constitutional originalist, a man who regarded the meaning of the Constitution as immutable and timed when it was written, even as the world around him changed. Its legal opinions were therefore based on a very narrow and clearly defined interpretation of constitutional law. The question then is what was the constitutional ideal of pizza according to Scalia. What is their platonic ideal by which anything that claims to be pizza can be judged? So, yes, the deep dish is great. But can it be considered a pizza in the legal sense of the word? The Court of Justice is currently sitting. By now, you`ve probably come to the same conclusion as Ward and me. If we take this definition of pizza as Scalia`s vision of «real pizza» and then use it to set a legal precedent for what pizza is and isn`t, well, most of us have probably never eaten pizza in our lives. The delivery cake you ate during the football game? No pizza. Jon Stewart`s favorite greasy New York pizzeria? They do not serve pizza.

That slice of frozen dough and cheese you brought home last Saturday from 7 to 11 to 3:30 in your infinite shame? Definitely no pizza. Ward notes that legally, «the minimum threshold for `pizza` is `crust, tomatoes, salt and oil,` and the maximum is `that, but with some kind of cheese and garlic.` No baked pizza. No meat pizza. No cow cheese. Cheese wasn`t even an ingredient in pizza until 1889, about 20 years before the first American pizzeria appeared. You can`t even use a damn rolling pin or press. Forget about any pizza made without two different periods of rising dough under strict time and temperature controls. Everyone has the right to have their opinion, but only one opinion ultimately counts and that belongs to Lady Liberty. No matter how good Chicago Deep Dish is, does it have enough in common with the platonic ideal of «pizza» to be classified under that umbrella? To find out, we are taking her to court with the help of local lawyer Nicolette Ward.

Although she does not specialize in pizza law, she graduated magna laude from Chicago-Kent College of Law, will be joining the law firm Romanucci & Blandin very soon, and perhaps most importantly, she has agreed to give us her pro bono legal advice. If you serve Neapolitan pizza in your restaurant, be sure to use Italian pizza dough and order the other toppings specifically (which is possible). Otherwise, call your pizza something else and wink at the Neapolitan without replacing it. So yes. The deep dish is not a legal pizza because it represents just about everything that Neapolitan pizza is not. It is fluid, changing, luxurious and fattening, the product of experimentation with the broadening of definitions of what pizza can be. Ward concludes his argument: «The law is theoretically a faithful animal. All courts are bound by the jurisprudence established by law and the decisions of higher courts (principle of stare decisis). Of course, all courts must comply with Supreme Court decisions.