Animal Rights

Summary:

This article contains remarks by Laurence Tribe on the work of Steven M. Wise.

Summary:

Many animal rights legal advocates are seeking more manageable steps that may someday lead to the elimination or modification of property status. This Article critiques such efforts, specifically focusing on two potential stepping stones that may be perceived as particularly desirable for animal rights activists: seeking limited personhood for intelligent species of animals, such as chimpanzees; and the possible expansion of tort law to provide animals standing as plaintiffs whose interests are represented by court-appointed humans. This Article will analyze Steven Wise's work in Rattling the Cage and Drawing the Line, advocating limited personhood for some animal species, and David Favre's proposals in A New Tort, as illustrative of efforts at incremental movement toward animal rights and the abolition or modification of property status for animals.

Summary:

Italy's State-Regions Agreement on Companion Animal Welfare and Pet Therapy introduced important new measures aimed at reducing the numbers of stray animals, such as the use of microchips for an official dog identification system and the creation of a computerised data bank. The Author, after having analyzed the legal status of animals under the current system and discussed the idea of extending legal personhood to such animals, considers the law for the current valuation of companion animals. Finally, the Author promotes the idea that there is a legal/rational basis for changing the way that companion animals should be valued by the legal system (such as Agreement) and recommends the adoption of principles/guidelines for the care of pet evaluate these aspects of the Agreement.

Summary:

This Article begins in Part II by distinguishing between “animal law,” “animal rights,” and “animal welfare” and discussing the growth of the field of animal law. It continues in Part III by setting forth the statistics on the number of companion animals in the United States (“U.S.”) and information about the households who have companion animals. Part IV is the longest as it relates to issues that everyone with companion animals must deal with-housing issues. Next, in Part V, the Article analyzes issues relating to the disputes arising when an animal is separated from his or her caretaker either by becoming lost or through dissolution. Veterinary issues are then briefly covered in Part VI, leading to a section on valuation issues in Part VII. The Article concludes in Part VIII with a section on estate planning issues focusing on the increasing number of states with enforceable pet trust statutes.

Summary:

Part I of this article begins with consideration of two different definitions of legal personhood. In Part II, the author makes use of philosopher Jacques Derrida's suggestion that humans maintain their hegemony and conceptual separation from animals by failing to include animals in the proscription “Thou shalt not kill.” Ultimately, the author concludes that these two examples indicate that pursuit of direct legal standing for animals themselves is not always necessary to secure positive substantive changes in the law.

Summary:

This Comment is divided into four parts. Part I will describe the problem presented by international whaling and provide a historical context of the industry, its relatively recent regulation, and specific actions concerning Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. Parts II and III will draw on this case study to illustrate the competing models of activism--protest and interventionist--and highlight the demonstrated advantages of and drawbacks to each. Part IV will lend insight into the implications of permitting each model.

Summary:

Part I of this Note will critique normative moral theory with respect to its fundamental role in animal welfare proselytizing, its applicability to legal theory, and its usefulness as a basis for legal decision making. Part II will discuss international trade disputes arising over morality-based domestic import restrictions in order to examine why the GATT has consistently been interpreted to err on the side of free trade and consumer choice. Finally, Part III will argue that the DCPA is not only an ineffective and unenforceable law but also potentially counterproductive to the goals of the Western animal welfare movement and overly costly to global trade infrastructure in light of more effective alternatives.

Summary:

Joan Dunayer's Speciesism appropriates and misrepresents the animal rights theory of Gary L. Francione. Dunayer's objections to Francione's highly qualified suggestion that a prohibition against confining hens to battery cages could be consistent with animal rights theory are specious. If the exploitation of non-human animals is to be completely abolished, those who bring about this result will have necessary been informed by a consistent, well-supported theoretical framework.

Summary:

This note analyzes the challenges that the animal rights movement faces in reforming society’s relationship to animals--particularly in regard to farmed animals--by tracking a similar evolution of the concepts of “dominion” and “civilization” within the early feminist movement. Specific focus is on nineteenth-century white middle-class women, who viewed themselves as models of civilized, liberated womanhood, while asserting maternalistic dominion over their “primitive” and underprivileged sisters. Acknowledging the way in which nineteenth-century America--which, for socio-political and legal purposes, was composed almost exclusively of Protestant white men--was willing to gradually “grant” one class of women a voice in society, based on well-established perceptions of “true womanhood,” is important in considering the way in which modern society seems poised to acknowledge some degree of rights for companion animals, while ignoring the legally-sanctioned misery to which billions of farmed animals are subjected annually.

Summary:

In this essay the author claims that mythic rejection of violence harms animals and their advocates in the following ways: (1) it lays the foundation for the claims of institutional (ab)users of animals that they do not and would not treat animals cruelly or violently because they are participants in the mainstream values of the society; (2) it results in traumatic silencing of advocates because of public disbelief that so much violence against animals could be occurring in a society that abhors violence; (3) it creates broad-brush oppositional categories such that animals’ advocates can be painted as violent actors in a society that rejects violence; and (4) it hinders full consideration among advocates as to what advocates themselves consider “violent” means of protecting animals for fear that such discussion might allow for any amount of violence and, thereby, discredit animals’ advocates and their cause.