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Friday, September 16, 2005
Law - Legal Aid for Animals
"Legal Aid for Animals: Law schools see a growing interest in representing creatures that can't speak for themselves" is the headline to an interesting article today from Legal Times. A quote:
What is animal law? It can include elements of virtually every other discipline of law. For example, it might involve torts in dog-bite cases, criminal law in animal-cruelty cases, trusts and estates when people have willed their property to benefit their pets, environmental law when wildlife is affected by human activity and international law when animals are traded between nations. Although there is often a well-developed body of law covering some animals, such as wildlife, almost no law protects other animals, such as animals used in research and farmed animals used to produce meat and other products for human consumption.Why does animal law matter? Simply speaking, we need animal lawyers because animals can't speak for themselves. Lawyers with knowledge of animal law are the only living beings capable of representing animals' interests within the judicial system.
Until recently, animal law was a relatively small and unknown specialty in the legal profession. Meanwhile, corporate interests have exploited the holes in the laws applied to animals. For instance, the meat industries have ensured that the Animal Welfare Act -- the federal statute purportedly providing protection for all animals -- effectively does not apply to farm animals. And state laws applying to these animals deny them the most basic requirements of humane treatment as they lay eggs, provide milk or wait to be slaughtered as meat.
Similar exemptions apply to animals used in research. Even where the law protects some animals, such as cats and dogs, economic interests easily push aside protections for man's best friend when substantial profits are involved; hence the stripping of legal requirements for puppy mills -- large businesses in which female dogs are often treated as breeding machines and are stripped of their puppies soon after delivering them. The puppies are then stored in small, dirty cages until they are shipped out to people who order them over the Internet and never realize the squalid conditions in which they began their lives. Lawyers cannot only fill these gaps in the law but can establish improved protections for animals.
Just this past year, the Humane Society of the United States established the Animal Protection Litigation Section, which, with eight attorneys and several law clerks, is now the largest in-house animal-protection litigation department in the nation. Law schools are now looking to fill new opportunities in an exploding field, and the GW Law School is at the forefront in creating a program to train the nation's future leading animal lawyers.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 16, 2005 08:33 AM
Posted to General Law Related