Animal Law Commons^™

The Need To Reconceptualize Wild Animals Post-Covid 19: Miscoordination Of Wildlife Regulations In China’S Food Legal Order, Yi Seul Kim

Pace Environmental Law Review

Today, China is one of the largest markets for wild animal trading. Yet, wild animals are in a regulatory grey area. There is an increasing need to revisit how wild animals are simultaneously but differently regulated in the food and wildlife protection regimes. Rarely do attempts to understand these two regimes occur, making this article's analysis of miscoordination in these bodies of law crucial in addressing the hindrance of nationwide food safety improvement efforts.

A Pact For The Future: Improving Animal Protection Legislation For Captive Orcas, Emily Lively

Pace Environmental Law Review

Using SeaWorld as a case study, this Note will argue that existing federal and state legislation fails to protect captive orcas from cruel and harmful treatment while in captivity.

Part I of this Note will address the gaps in federal and state animal welfare and cruelty legislation relevant to captive orcas. Part II will discuss the enactment of the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act of 2019 (“PACT Act”), the first federal animal cruelty statute. Part III will use SeaWorld as a case study to test the effectiveness of the PACT Act in criminalizing animal cruelty at the federal level. …

All Dogs Get Regulatory Protection—And This Means Wolves Too: Extending Species- Specific Animal Welfare Act Protections, Megan Edwards

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bringing Animal Protection Legislation Into Line With Its Purported Purposes: A Proposal For Equality Amongst Non-Human Animals, Jane Kotzmann, Gisela Nip

Pace Environmental Law Review

The United States has a strong history of enacting laws to protect animals from the pain and suffering inflicted by humans. Indeed, the passage of the Massachusetts’ Body of Liberties in 1641 made it the first country in the world to pass such laws. Nevertheless, contemporary animal protection laws in all jurisdictions of the United States are limited in their ability to adequately realize their primary purpose of protecting animals from unnecessary or unjustifiable pain and suffering. This is a result of limited statutory definitions of ‘animal’ and far-reaching exclusions commonly found in animal protection legislation. These exclusions frequently apply …

Accurate Economics To Protect Endangered Species And Their Critical Habitats, Jacob P. Byl

Pace Environmental Law Review

Federal agencies currently use a methodology that finds negligible benefits of protecting critical habitat for endangered species, despite the prime real estate that is often involved. The Endangered Species Act already calls for economic analysis, but agencies currently treat it as a meaningless hoop to jump through. Agencies justify this hollow exercise by pointing to the difficulty in quantifying the increment of added protection that comes with critical habitat designation. However, the increment of added protection for critical habitat can be measured using methods already employed by agencies in other environmental analyses. Although the central benefits of critical habitat are …

Bringing The European Eel Back From The Brink: The Need For A New Agreement Under The Convention On Migratory Species, Chris Wold

Pace Environmental Law Review

The European eel is considered “Critically Endangered.” Its population has been declining due to overutilization, barriers to migration such as dams, pollution, and climate change. The international community has responded by including the European eel in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (“CITES”) to regulate international trade and Appendix II of the Convention on Migratory Species (“CMS”) to help improve the species conservation status. The EU has taken regional action to prohibit imports into and exports from EU Member States, although intra-EU trade is permissible. Despite these actions, the eel’s conservation status might not be …

Preventing A Risk/Risk Trade-Off: An Analysis Of The Measures Necessary To Increase U.S. Pollinator Numbers, Camila Acchiardo Vallejo

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Note will proceed in four parts. Part II will discuss the importance of pollinators and the possible reasons for their declining numbers. Part III will delve into the current and proposed actions to increase pollinator populations that are taking place in the United States. Part IV will then discuss the generally desired and widely accepted solution: a ban on neonicotinoids. This Part will introduce the implementation and results of a neonicotinoid ban in the European Union, and the risk/risk trade-off presented by a neonicotinoid ban. Finally, Part V will compile the solutions discussed in Parts III and IV, and …

Migratory Waterbird Conservation At The Flyway Level: Distilling The Added Value Of Aewa In Relation To The Ramsar Convention, Melissa Lewis

Pace Environmental Law Review

In June 1995, the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) was adopted, and this instrument remains the only legally binding waterbird Agreement in the CMS Family. However, while AEWA has been lauded as a very promising instrument, the concern has also been raised that the Agreement “has a large potential scope for the duplication of obligations, especially with regard to the protection of wetland habitats, given the operation of the Ramsar Convention”. The existing literature thus recognizes that overlap between AEWA and the Ramsar Convention is potentially problematic. It fails, however, to provide a detailed analysis of …

Focusing On Human Responsibility Rather Than Legal Personhood For Nonhuman Animals, Richard L. Cupp Jr.

Pace Environmental Law Review

We should focus on human legal accountability for responsible treatment of nonhuman animals rather than radically restructuring our legal system to make them legal persons. This essay, provided at the kind invitation of the Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) and Steven Wise, President of the Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc., outlines a number of concerns about animal legal personhood. It does so primarily in the context of the plaintiff’s brief in The Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v. Lavery, filed in the New York Supreme Court, New York County. The first Lavery lawsuit (Lavery I) was filed in Fulton County in late …

Take It To The Limit: The Illegal Regulation Prohibiting The Take Of Any Threatened Species Under The Endangered Species Act, Jonathan Wood

Pace Environmental Law Review

Following the introduction, part II of this article will provide a brief background on the adoption of the Endangered Species Act. Part III will explain that the statute does not authorize the agencies to extend the take prohibition to all threatened species. Part IV will argue that returning to the statutory scheme would result in a fairer distribution of the costs of species protection by imposing the costs of prophylactic protection on agencies and the public generally. Burdening individuals would be a last resort, as Congress intended. Finally, Part V will identify how Congress’ policy is a reasonable way to …

Interpreting "Enhancement Of Survival" In Granting Section 10 Endangered Species Act Exemptions To Animal Exhibitors, Anne Haas

Pace Environmental Law Review

Managing endangered species in captivity presents a unique set of problems. Despite their enormous potential to preserve species in the wild - through captive breeding programs, conservation initiatives, and environmental advocacy - many facilities are lagging behind. Part II of this note discusses the evolution of zoos from ancient Egyptian displays of wealth to modern day conservation and education centers. Focusing on the Endangered Species Act, Part III introduces various laws protecting captive animals. Part IV discusses the great potential of zoos to preserve species and the ecosystems on which they rely, while acknowledging the diverse nature of animal exhibitors …

A Sitting Duck: Local Government Regulation Of Hunting And Weapons Discharge In The State Of New York, Gary E. Kalbaugh

Pace Environmental Law Review

On March 31, 2014, the New York State Legislature significantly modified New York's Environmental Conservation Law. The Environmental Conservation Law imposes limitations on the discharge of longbows. A longbow is defined by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation as “a longbow, recurve bow or compound bow which is designed to be used by holding the bow at arm's length, with arrow on the string, and which is drawn, pulled and released by hand or with the aid of a hand-held trigger device attached to the bowstring.”

Before the 2014 amendment, longbows could not be discharged in such a way that …

Fraud And First Amendment Protections Of False Speech: How United States V. Alvarez Impacts Constitutional Challenges To Ag-Gag Laws, Larissa U. Liebmann

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article first explains the background and functions of undercover investigations of agricultural production facilities, and explains the bases upon which states pass laws intended to prevent these investigations. It then gives a background of research already conducted on the constitutionality of Ag-Gag laws, and examines the relevance of the Supreme Court case Alvarez. Based on the analysis provided in Alvarez, the article demonstrates that Ag-Gag laws would not be exempt from heightened First Amendment scrutiny as fraud statutes. Moreover, it demonstrates that, in particular, the Iowa and Utah Ag-Gag laws would not survive the heightened scrutiny outlined in Alvarez.

Animal Agriculture Laws On The Chopping Block: Comparing United States And Brazil, Elizabeth Bennett

Pace Environmental Law Review

Brazil and the United States are among the largest producers and exporters of livestock in the world. This raises important animal rights and environmental concerns. While many of the impacts of industrial animal agriculture are similar in Brazil and the United States, there are key differences in the effects on animals and the environment. The variations between Brazil and the United States are due to ecological, production method, and regulatory differences between the countries. Despite their dissimilarities, however, Brazil and the United States both largely fail to adequately protect farm animals and the environment from the impacts of large-scale animal …

Origins And Development Of Teaching Animal Law In Brazil, Tagore Trajano De Almeida Silva

Pace Environmental Law Review

This paper examines the strategies utilized on each continent and shows the path made for these scholars to build a framework to discuss animal law within law schools. The conclusion is that this movement produced by such scholars has changed the way law schools are teaching law and is affording new opportunities to solve animal concerns, and likewise, social problems in Brazil and around the world.

Therefore, this article first discusses the philosophical Brazilian background to teach animal law, and how the animal rights movement creates a framework for professors and students working in this field. It then summarily explores …

Using Emerging Pollution Tracking Methods To Address The Downstream Impacts Of Factory Farm Animal Welfare Abuse, Tarah Heinzen, Abel Russ

Pace Environmental Law Review

CAFOs present numerous interconnected ethical, environmental, and public health threats, and this article will discuss opportunities to address the multiple adverse impacts of factory farming through advances in pollution tracking methodologies. The first section will introduce the factory farm issue, and the relationship between its environmental and welfare consequences. We then review approaches to establishing liability for surface and groundwater contamination under existing pollution control laws and describe the unique challenges of using these approaches in the context of CAFO pollution. We then discuss techniques that have been used to more precisely identify sources of pollution, including measurements of a …

Cultural Solipsism, Cultural Lenses, Universal Principles, And Animal Advocacy, Thomas G. Kelch

Pace Environmental Law Review

Given the potpourri of human cultures and the need to take a global view of animal rights advocacy, how can animal rights advocates most efficiently and successfully advocate for animals? This article will address this issue.

First, I will describe and analyze views of the human/animal relationship from five example cultural traditions: Western culture, represented generally by Europe and North America, Indian culture, Chinese culture, South African culture, and Islamic culture, exemplified primarily here by Turkey. It is not asserted here that any of these cultures or countries are homogenous; they are not. Although Western culture is primarily constructed on …

Foreword, David N. Cassuto

Pace Environmental Law Review

The overlap between animal law and environmental law arises because the two disciplines are fundamentally linked. One cannot talk about the environment without also discussing the nonhuman sentient beings that populate it. Indeed, as I shall discuss shortly, one of the most vexing issues for me— as a scholar working in both fields—involves my ongoing attempt to address the historical tension between the two disciplines. This volume of the Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) marks an important step on the path toward resolving those tensions and moving environmental law forward. That path will not always be smooth, nor will it …

Nonhuman Rights To Personhood, Steven M. Wise

Pace Environmental Law Review

2012 Dyson Distinguished Lecture, delivered April 26, 2012 at Pace Law School. Introduction by Prof. David N. Cassuto. Video available here.

Problems For Pale Male: An Analysis Of The U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service’S Nest Destruction Policy, Brent Plater, Nicole Lopez-Hagan, Laura Horton

Pace Environmental Law Review

During the 2004 holiday season, Pale Male, New York City’s celebrated and world-renowned red-tailed hawk, had his nest deliberately destroyed. The nest was approximately 400-pounds and was built over several years. Almost immediately, this act of destruction was met with popular uproar among his many fans throughout the world. This tragic story could easily have been avoided if the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) had correctly carried out its duties under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). What happened to Pale Male years ago is still a possibility today because the Service’s policy remains the same. This article …