Law Commons^™

Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History Of Food, From Sustainable To Suicidal, Miguel A. Quintana

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Demons & Droids: Nonhuman Animals On Trial, Gerrit D. White

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Nonhuman animal trials are ridiculous to the modern sensibilities of the West. The concept of them is in opposition to the idea of nonhuman animals—entities without agency, incapable of guilt by nature of irrationality. This way of viewing nonhuman animals is relatively new to the Western mind. Putting nonhuman animals on trial has only become unacceptable in the past few centuries. Before this shift, nonhuman animal trials existed as methods of communities policing themselves. More than that, these trials were part of legal systems ensuring they provided justice for all. This shift happened because the relationship between Christian authorities and …

Cafo’S Are A Public Health Crisis:The Creation Of Covid-19, Helena Masiello

University of Miami Law Review

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (“CAFO’s”) are largely unregulated by State or Federal Laws in the United States. As a result of this lack of oversight, they are a breeding ground for deadly infectious diseases. The COVID-19 epidemic has demonstrated the threat that diseases pose to the United State like H1N1, SARS, and Ebola.
The USDA needs to regulate CAFOs under the mandate given to them by congress in the AHPA to ensure that they are not the epicenter of the next wave of deadly infectious diseases. Scientists have been warning about the disease potential of CAFOs for the last decade, …

Overcoming Inertia To Deliver Sentience Policy Commensurate With Sentience Science, Claire Bass

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al’s target article makes clear that meaningful change in policy and practice to protect animals has failed to progress in lockstep with scientific understanding of their sentience and needs. The underlying causes for inertia in political and practical progress for animals in the UK context are multi-faceted and complex, including economic forces; lack of cross-departmental accountability for animal welfare; and challenges where it suits conservation scientists to dismiss or downgrade the impacts of management decisions on individual animals. All of these influences and more must be understood and addressed if we are to deliver meaningful and timely protections …

Who Gets The Pet In The Divorce? Examining A Standard For The New York Legislature To Adopt, Jared Sanders

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can Sentience Recognition Protect Animals? Lessons From Québec's Animal Law Reform, Michael Lessard

Animal Law Review

Academic literature needs to provide a better understanding of the legal recognition of animal sentience. This Article aims to help fill out this gap by diving into Que ́bec’s legal recognition of animal sentience in 2015. This Article draws three lessons from Que ́bec law’s recognition of animal sentience and biological needs. First, it argues that legal sentience recognition’s fate is to become more than symbolic and to receive normative force. Second, it contends that considering sentience protection as the sole instrument to prevent animal killing and exploitation is a mistake. This is so because respect for sentience is reduced …

Nuisance Most Fowl: The Problem With Chicago's Permissive Livestock Ordinance And How To Fix It, Shelley Geiszler

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Conspiracy Of Life: A Posthumanist Critique Of Appoaches To Animal Rights In The Law, Barnaby E. Mclaughlin

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Near the end of his life, Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, turned his attention from the traditional focus of philosophy, humans and humanity, to an emerging field of philosophical concern, animals. Interestingly, Derrida claimed in an address entitled The Animal That Therefore I Am that,

since I began writing, in fact, I believe I have dedicated [my work] to the question of the living and of the living animal. For me that will always have been the most important and decisive question. I have addressed it a thousand times, either directly or obliquely, …

The Animal Protection Commission: Advancing Social Membership For Animals Through A Novel Administrative Agency, John Maccormick

Dalhousie Law Journal

If the state sought to improve law's treatment of nonhuman animals, what form should its intervention take? This paper questions the assumption that the state would have to choose between incremental welfare reforms and an immediate transition to animal personhood. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities theory and on Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's political approach to animal rights, it argues that the focus should be on how the relationship between human and nonhuman animals can be improved. It suggests that the state could intervene by creating an administrative agency with just this task; and that it could look to labour …

The Profit And Loss Report On Animal Rights: How Profit Maximization Has Driven The Stagnation Of The Legal Identification Of Animals As Property, Anthony M. Doss

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The concern for the wellbeing and humane treatment of animals continues to grow in the United States. However, while public opinion on how animals should be treated has largely changed, the legal classification for animals has not. Nonhuman animals today, just as in centuries past, keep only a property classification in the law. This classification, which we humans assign to furniture, jewelry, and paper plates, comes with a set of legal rights held exclusively by the owner of the property. These rights bestow upon the owner the abilities to sell, use, and destroy the property as they see fit with …

Localism, Labels, And Animal Welfare, Samuel R. Wiseman

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The law does relatively little to improve the welfare of animals raised for food. In the short term, at least, market-based solutions appear to have more promise as a means of promoting farm animal welfare, as consumers increasingly seek out local and humanely-raised meat and eggs. To aid consumers in identifying these products, certification systems of varying degrees of rigor exist, but even these are of little use to consumers in the restaurant context, which accounts for a large percentage of meat consumption. Patrons see only finished meals, making fraud difficult to detect, and a recent newspaper investigation suggests that …

Connexion: A Note On Praxis For Animal Advocates, John Enman-Beech

Dalhousie Law Journal

Effective animal advocacy requires human-animal connexion. I apply a relational approach to unfold this insight into a praxis for animal advocates. Connexion grounds the affective relationships that so often motivate animal advocates. More importantly, it enables animal agency, the ability of animals to act and communicate in ways humans can experience and respond to. With connexion in mind, some weaknesses of previous reform efforts become apparent. I join these in the slogan "abolitionismas disconnexion." In so far as abolitionism draws humans and animals apart, it undermines the movement's social basis, limits its imaginative resources, and deprives animals of a deeper …

Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond The Property/Personhood Impasse, Will Kymlicka

Dalhousie Law Journal

While animal law has been subject to frequent reform in Canada and abroad, the basic legal foundations of animal oppression are largely unchanged. There are many reasons for this impasse, but part of the explanation is that legal reforms are caught in what we might call the property/personhood dilemma. In most legal systems, domesticated animals are defined as property and so long as this remains true, reforms are likely to be marginal and ineffective. However the main alternative-to shift animals from the category of property to personhoodis politically unfeasible, particularly for the domesticated animals who are most intensively exploited in …

Free Tilly?: Legal Personhood For Animals And The Intersectionality Of The Civil & Animal Rights Movements, Becky Boyle

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Developments In Animal Law: An Evolving Area In Virginia Law, Ryan Murphy

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents: Annual Survey 2015

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Animal Law?, Jerrold Tannenbaum

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article considers a critically important issue facing the new field of animal law: how to define animal law itself. Two sharply different general approaches to defining the area currently vie for support. One defines animal law as committed to advocacy on behalf of animals, including, for many proponents of this approach, promotion of animal rights. The competing approach defines animal law in a purely descriptive manner, as (roughly) the area of law that relates to animals, whatever substantive principles regarding animals the law may adopt. The Article demonstrates that advocacy-oriented definitions violate fundamental standards of definition and conflict with …

The Integration Of The Ethic Of The Respectful Use Of Animals Into The Law, David Favre

Between the Species

This article develops an ethical construct of “respectful use” to govern the conduct of humans toward animals. The scope of the terms “use” and “respectful” are developed. Some guidelines for the discernment of respectful use of animals are suggested. Then the status of animals within the legal system is briefly considered. Within the law, the socially defined key term is “unnecessary” rather than respectful. Finally, the newer legal standard of duty of care is shown to be approaching the ethical concept of respectful use.

Cheap Meat: How Factory Farming Is Harming Our Health, The Environment, And The Economy, R. Jason Richards, Erica L. Richards

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Celebrating The Twenty-Fifth Issue Of The Annual Survey Of Virginia Law, Marguerite R. Ruby, Sarah Warren S. Beverly

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Animal Law, K. Michelle Welch

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Animal Welfare Law In Canada And Europe, Elaine L. Hughes, Christiane Meyer

Animal Law Review

The idea that animals are entities that deserve protection, irrespective of their utility to man, is firmly grounded in the Enlightenment. The principle that a creature's need for considerate treatment did not depend on the possession of a soul or the ability to reason, but on the capacity to feel pain was formulated and debated at that time. The debate continues today-Canada is in the midst of examining its own ethical, philosophical and legal beliefs about animal welfare and cruelty. This article examines the current state of animal welfare and cruelty laws and recent attempts through federal legislation to modernize …

Hindering The Progress Of Science: The Use Of The Patent System To Regulate Research On Genetically Altered Animals, Robert B. Kambic

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note considers whether genetically altered animals should be protected by patents and discusses the ramifications of a congressionally imposed moratorium on the issuance of animal patents. The Note discusses the purpose of the patent system and analyzes case law concerning patents on living organisms, examines the controversy surrounding the patenting of altered animals, and contains a discussion of the PTO's role in issuing an ethically controversial patent. The Note concludes that the PTO was correct in determining that genetically altered animals are patentable subject matter.