Animal Rights: Related Articles

Drawing upon various schools of legal thought, this Essay explores how ideological and non-legal factors influence the adjudication process in animal law cases. The Legal Realist and Critical Legal Studies movements highlighted the indeterminacy present in legal doctrine and undermined trust in judges’ ability to arrive at “correct” answers to legal questions. In the midst of such indeterminacy, where legal texts do not predetermine legal outcomes, judges tend to render decisions that are consistent with pervasive societal norms and existing distributions of political power. Starting from these premises, the Author questions whether innovative and creative impact litigation by the animal law movement can succeed in fundamentally challenging speciesism through a legal system that is pervasively hostile to the interests of animals. Although incremental and meaningful gains are possible through litigation, we must recognize the limits of legal reform in the short-term. Although such limitations are typically seen as cause for despair, the Author argues that recognizing our powerlessness can be a source of compassion and an opportunity to experience our shared existential vulnerability with animals.

Overview of the state of Animal Law in Australia.

Separate from its vulnerability to criticism by those politically opposed, a call for legal rights for animals is without justification on the very two pillars on which such a claim presumes to found itself—the precepts of law and of science. The claim’s inherent weaknesses are revealed in the use of terms that are inapplicable given both the way that legal rules work as a practical matter and the current level of our scientific knowledge about animals themselves. This article confronts these two core defects of the animal rights paradigm and seeks to shed the light of law, science, and reason on what seems to be an unreasonable, nonscientific, and yet ill-critiqued phenomenon.

This Introduction provides an overview of the evolution of animal law over the past twenty years, demonstrating how changes in the law, social awareness, and legal education have directly affected this field. This Introduction describes both the positive and negative changes that have taken place, from the banning of dogfighting and cockfighting by federal law and some state laws; a spread in voter-adopted legislation providing for the protection of agricultural animals; and movements to reduce the use of chimpanzees in animal research; to the limitations of the Animal Welfare Act; changes in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) policy lifting the ban on USDA inspection of horsemeat; discrimination of certain breeds of dogs through breed-specific legislation; and the weakening of a number of federal laws providing protection to wildlife. This Introduction also provides an overview of case law, discussing attempts to achieve standing for animals and differing approaches in calculating damages for harm to pets. With respect to legal institutions, there has been an increasing presence of animal law sections within the American Bar Association and state bar associations. Animal law has also expanded within legal education. This is evidenced by the emergence of animal law conferences, publications in animal focused law reviews and textbooks, animal law courses at prestigious law schools, and full-time professors specializing in the area of animal law.

Recent discoveries of higher cognitive abilities in some species of birds and mammals are bringing about radical changes in our attitudes to animals and will lead to changes in legislation for the protection of animals. We fully support these developments, but at the same time we recognize that the scientific study of higher cognition in animals has touched on only a small number of vertebrate species. Accordingly, we warn that calls to extend rights, or to at least better welfare protection, for the handful of species that have revealed their intelligence to us may be counterproductive. While this would improve the treatment of the selected few, be they birds or mammals, a vast majority of species, even closely related ones, will be left out. This may not be a particular problem if being left out is only a temporary state that can be changed as new information becomes available. But, in practice, those protected and not protected are separated by a barrier that can be more difficult to remove than it was to erect in the first place. We summarize the recent research on higher cognition from the position of active researchers in animal behavior and neuroscience.

The article begins in Part I of by examining species difference as a social construction similar to race, gender and other identity and hierarchy markers historically understood as biological. In Part II, while not claiming identicalness in the trajectories of different oppressions, the author discusses how the discursive construction of species difference bears a close resemblance to that of gender and race narratives. The article concludes by calling upon our affective responses to imagine animals as possible candidates for personhood and rights, and, further, to question why being human should be a qualification for justice.

Portugal has had a long and bloody tradition of violence against animals, not the least of which includes Spanish-style bullfighting that has shown itself to be quite resistant to legal, cultural, and social reforms that would respect the right of animals to be free from suffering. While Portugal’s evolution towards respecting animal rights and welfare has been a slow and painful process, Portugal has nevertheless made some remarkable strides towards eradicating the suffering of animals, most notably with the passage of the Law of 1995. Portuguese scholars and activists have been instrumental in forcing the Portuguese government and citizenry to come to terms with the inhumane treatment of animals.

This short article relates the formation and early history of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals.

This article analyzes the role of the animal “offender,” by examining the animal trials and executions of years past. The writer argues that although the formal prosecution of animals as practiced centuries ago may have ended (for the most part), we continue to punish animals for their “crimes” against human beings. She suggests that we do this primarily to achieve two ends: the restoration of order and the achievement of revenge, and concludes with a call for a renewed emphasis on “due process” for animals threatened with punishment for their offenses.

Twenty volumes is no small feat for an independently funded, entirely student-run journal. With a total staff of twenty students, including a small Board comprised of Editor in Chief, James Goldstein, Jr.; Managing Editor, William Fig; Articles Editor, Kelly Jeffries; and Form and Style Editor, Benjamin Allen, Animal Law published the inaugural volume of the world’s first animal law journal in 1995. This landmark event was the result of the hard work of Lewis & Clark students, with some key support. In this first volume, Animal Law gave “special thanks to Benjamin Allen for his hard work and dedication in founding [the] journal, to Matthew Howard and Nancy Perry for their inspiration, and to Richard Katz for his invaluable support throughout the process.” Animal Law also gave “thanks to Michael Blumm for his advice and encouragement, and to the Board of [Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF)] for their support.”

This article examines the main arguments used for denying moral rights to nonhuman animals, the rights to life and bodily integrity in particular. Because these arguments are deficient, animals should not be denied legal rights on the basis of their presumed moral inferiority to humans.

A comprehensive consideration of the role of animals in the cultural development of China.

In this Introduction to Volume 13, Part 2 of Animal Law, the author considers the "Animal Question" - the shorthand term "for all of those difficult questions about our views of, and relations with,nonhuman animals."

On April 14, 2006, the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund of New York University School of Law hosted a symposium on how to overcome some common courtroom barriers faced by animal advocates. Panelists discussed cultural and legal transitions, legal standing for nonhuman animals, and potential causes of action. Symposium participants included prominent attorneys, authors, philosophers, and professors specializing in the field of animal protection law.

In the third panel of the NYU Symposium, distinguished animal law professionals discuss various causes of action which may be used on behalf of animals in the courtroom. Panelists talk about traditional forms of standing, make suggestions for innovation using existing laws, and discuss visions of how they would like to see the law develop as it pertains to standing for animals.

This Article reviews the theories and methods of Abolitionists and Welfarists and suggests one reason that they have failed to relieve animal suffering and death: Welfarists use the right tool in the service of the wrong goal; Abolitionists work toward the right goal but expressly decline to use the right tool. Specifically, Welfarists accurately portray the appalling conditions in which animals live and die, but they inaccurately claim that welfare measures can remedy those appalling conditions without any challenge to the property status of animals. Abolitionists correctly assert that the exploitation of animals must end, and they depict the astonishing rate at which animals are killed and eaten, but they typically spare their audience the unpleasant subject of animal suffering. The thesis of this Article is that the tide of animal suffering and death will turn only when Abolitionists employ the tool used to achieve social change throughout the history of the United States: accurately depicting the suffering of the oppressed, in image and narrative.