The gathering momentum for animal rights
| Autor | David Favre |
| Cargo | Professor Favre teaches animal law |
| Páginas | 13-23 |
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While the roots of the present animal welfare/rights social movement reaches back into the 1950’s with the efforts of a number of individuals to pass a national animal protection law,2it was not until the publication of Professor Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1977) and Professor Tom Regan’s A Case for Animal Rights (1983) that the philosophical claim for animal rights got ignited and the movement achieved intellectual traction.3In 1981 in the midst of the new concern about animal issues, on a November weekend in 1981, at Brooklyn Law School (New York), the first national conference was held for lawyers to consider animal legal issues. (While names can and should be associated with all this historical information, that level of detail will have to wait until a book is written.) The next year at a meeting in San Francisco (California), the first national organization of attorneys was formed to promote animal welfare/rights in the legal system. The initial name was Attorneys for Animal Rights, but several years later the name was changed to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF).4Also in the 1980’s the activist organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and many non-legal organizations were formed. 5 Thus began the legal and social movement to create awareness of animal suffering and to obtain change within the legal system on behalf of animals. This growing movement had sufficient activity and interests in the general population that in the summer of 1990 there was a "March for the Animals" in Washington D.C. (our national capital). Upwards of 10,000 people showed up to march from the White House (the residence of the President of the U.S.) to the steps of the national Capital building, chanting slogans and giving speeches on behalf of animals. (The route and format of the march followed the long established traditions of public protest marches, established during the civil rights movement in the U.S. back in the 1960’s.)
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All of this broader social activity in the 1980’s and early 1990’s had very little impact within the legal profession or the law schools of the country. As the animal issues obtained increasing public awareness college students, in the tradition of environmental movement thirty years earlier, began arriving at law schools to pursue the goal of legal change on behalf of animals. In was back in 1994 that I was asked to write an introduction to the first volume of the Animal Law Review. 6 It should be noted that within the United States legal journals are published primarily by law schools through the efforts of law students, so change can occur by the efforts of students, long before the acceptance of the issue at high levels of authority within legal education. In this case the law review was produced by the law students7at Lewis and Clark Law School, in Portland, Oregon, USA. The Law School itself would not pay the cost of printing the Journal, so the ALDF paid the cost of printing, to get animal legal issues formally before the thinking lawyers of the country.
At approximately the same time at the same school, an overlapping group of law students formed the first Student Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF). Since that time interests in the topic of Animal Law has exploded in the realm of the law schools across the nation. This past summer I wrote the introduction to a second, new journal dealing with animal legal issues, the Journal of Animal Law, a peer reviewed law review of Michigan State University College of Law. Law students at the University of Pennsylvania have also announced their intentions to create a third animal focused law journal.8The existence of these journals is important as they allow the development of ideas and theories within the legal community, at a level of sophistication which could not be realized in the public press. While the first debate within a movement is of philosophy, this lays the conceptual foundation for the direction in which the law ought to proceed. The philosophical debate creates the desire and justification for social change, but does not suggest how to obtain the change within existing laws and institutions. The debate in the law journals occurs when the discussion becomes more focused upon how to change the law. Thus there is a critical role for law journals, where the debate about how to proceed can occur among the lawyers. This
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is modestly important for changes of the nature of animal welfare improvements, but is critical for that much more difficult concept of animal rights.9Besides the publication of scholarly articles, another important measure of progress is the teaching of the course within law schools. While a few course on Animal Law were taught in the 1980’s and early 1990’s it was the teaching of the course at Harvard Law School that really was a landmark event. There are two aspects of this occurrence that are important to note. First, it was taught by Steven Wise, past president of ALDF and activist attorney, as an adjunct professor,10not
by one of the tenured professors. In 2005 it is still the case that only a few of the law school’s animal law courses are taught by tenured faculty. Secondly, the occurrence of the class at Harvard gave legitimacy to the issue that had not previously existed. An article in the New York Times about the course and the movement resulted in a large cascade of press coverage about the movement generally and possible legal changes specifically.11When Steven Wise taught at Harvard he had to use his own materials, and before wide teaching of the topic could occur it was necessary for a national textbook to arrive upon the scene. Most individuals do not have the ability or time to put together an entire semester’s worth of materials. For deans and faculty to approve the creation and teaching of new courses, it is very helpful to be able to show a national textbook that by its chapter headings defines the scope and nature of the course. As might be expected, pioneer teachers, who were and are still adjunct professors at various law schools, wrote the first book published in 2000.12It should
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be noted that the demand for the teaching of the course arose not from the deans or faculty of the various schools, but by the demand of the students requesting the course be taught.
Increasing student demand, the publishing of a textbook and the availability of attorneys already active in the movement to teach the course have created a significant increase in number of law schools offering a course in Animal Law over the past decade. Omitting the intervening details, consider the scope of the interests today, as measured by both the number of law schools who are offering the course and the number of law schools where students have self organized to promote animal issues. The best count is kept by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and is available from their website.13In of the fall of 2005 the site listed 62 law schools as offering the courses, and 68 law schools had student organizations. (There are approximately 190 American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools in the U.S.)
Another measure of growing interests is that there is now a national Animal Law moot court competition being held annually at Harvard Law School with teams from over a dozen law schools participating each February.14A second national textbook joined the scene in 2002 and a book of essays for use in classes in 2004.15As a further example of expanding interests, in 2004 at California Western Law College the first international conference for attorneys and professors interested in animal issues was held.16All this activity has created a presence for animal legal issues within the teaching world. However, much is to be done before it can be judged as fully integrated into legal academics. At the presence there is no section of the American Society of Law Schools (with over 4,000 law professor members) that has an animal welfare, animal rights focus. This shortcoming is primarily because of the few number of full time professors who write and teach in this area, perhaps not more than six or eight in the U.S., depending on how you count. For a number of people it is a novelty course, not a mainstream area where significant academic effort should be expended. This image is what will need to be overcome. While at least one law professor has received tenure at an ABA law school based upon scholarship in the animal law area, scholarship...
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