VRG Member Teaches Animal Law And Ethics to Penn Students

For most lawyers, the phrase ‘animal law’ conjures up thoughts of a grief-stricken pet owner suing a veterinarian for malpractice or maybe a divorcing couple fighting over custody of the family dog. Animal law does encompass these cases, but it is much broader and more complex than issues of liability for negligence or contracts involving companion animals.

After numerous and persistent student requests to the school's administration, VRG Member Penny Ellison started teaching the first course in Animal Law ever offered by the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2006. Students not only wanted to learn about how animals are treated under the law but also how to assist nonprofit groups working on animal-related issues. To that end, they formed the Animal Law Project, a student-run group that provides pro bono legal research and other services to nonprofit organizations.

The seminar course is offered every spring and explores the legal and ethical issues that arise in connection with human relationships. These issues center on companion animals but also upon the billions of animals raised for food and food production, the millions bred for and/or used in scientific research, and the countless animals exhibited for entertainment. In addition, it covers wild animals whose quality of life and indeed very existence is profoundly affected by state and federal laws.

Ms. Ellison teaches the class with the help of experienced and varied guest speakers, including lawyers and others from the Humane Society of the United States, the ASPCA, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). In addition to law students, graduate students from a wide range of fields — such as veterinary medicine, political science, and social science — enroll in the course. Together, they explore a number of diverse areas of the law that affect the interests and ‘rights’, or lack thereof, of animals.

The course's primary goals are:

1. to learn the substance and principles of existing law as it addresses non-human animals;
2. to comprehend how our current legal treatment of animals is affected by historical, philosophical, and ethical traditions; and
3. to assess the possibilities for using various legal concepts and tools such as ‘rights’, ‘legal personhood’, ‘standing’, and contract and tort theories to change the status of animals in our legal system.

Many of the students had had no exposure to the realities of farm animal production, and through video and discussion, they find themselves addressing ethical questions that may never have occurred to them before. A recurring theme is always, “Why do we treat different species of animals so differently”? Put another way, “What ethical principle allows us to draw the lines between animals we lovingly care for and animals we are willing to raise in intensive confinement”?

The class is usually oversubscribed, and the inclusion of students from various disciplines makes for a lively and engaging classroom experience.

Visit The Animal Legal Defense Fund website: www.aldf.org.