Animal Law Commons^™

The Value Of Existence, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

One does not read Beating Hearts passively. I found myself agreeing often, disagreeing often, and sometimes doing both at the same time. Just as frequently, the book made me reexamine my views from a perspective I had not considered before. For example, prior to reading the book, I had not explored the basis for my belief that causing the death of a living being is a morally significant act. The authors (with a post-mortem assist from Epicurus) have seen to that deficiency. This forum seems an ideal place to push that discussion a bit further.

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 …

Don't Be Cruel (Anymore): A Look At The Animal Cruelty Regimes Of The United States And Brazil With A Call For A New Animal Welfare Agency, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the United States and around the world, animals exploited for human use suffer cruel and needless harm. The group bearing the brunt of this exploitation--agricultural animals--is routinely exempted from the largely ineffective and rarely enforced animal welfare and anti-cruelty regulations that exist today. This Article offers a comparative analysis of the agricultural animal welfare regimes of two countries with globally significant presence in the agriculture industry: the United States and Brazil. Even though the two countries approach agricultural animal welfare differently, they arrive at the same outcome: institutionalized indifference to animal suffering. To remedy the current regulatory structure, this …

Environment, Ethics, And The Factory Farm, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Transcript of Symposium: Ethical Implications of the Commercial Use of Animals.

What are the ethics behind factory farming? What are the ethical implications? Specifically, I'd like to focus on the environmental implications. But I define environmental implications a little differently than a lot of folks because I teach animal law.

Owning What You Eat: The Discourse Of Food, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay examines the role of communication in the formation of law and social norms and the implications of that role for animal law and ethics. Part III contextualizes animal law within contemporary risk society. Part IV looks at how efficiency has transformed from an economic concept into a normative guideline and discusses how that transformation has affected animals and agriculture. It tracks the rise of industrial agriculture and ties it to this fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of efficiency. The essay concludes with some thoughts on how to reformulate contemporary notions of efficiency and ethics to account for the …