Animal Law Commons^™

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 …