About

The Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School is a multidisciplinary think-and-do tank dedicated to empowering scholars and students to produce positive legal and political change for animals, people, and the environment upon which they depend.

LEAP works to draw the attention of leading thinkers and doers to the deep questions of conscience and law raised by human-animal relationships and industrial abuses of animals and ecosystems. To this end, LEAP leads and coordinates a diverse program of activities that serve students and scholars at Yale and that contribute to expanding and advancing the fields of environmental and animal law. LEAP’s programming includes: academic and experiential courses; research initiatives; robust collaborations between faculty, students, and outside experts focused on advancing strategies to address the multiple externalized costs of industrial animal agriculture, including especially the sector’s contributions to climate change; a Student Fellows program and active support for student research projects and publications; and regular lectures, panels, and events that bring leading thinkers — lawmakers, scholars, artists, scientists, advocates, and journalists — to Yale’s campus to inspire, enrich, and inform the Program’s work. The Program’s work is highly interdisciplinary, and we often partner with schools, departments, and other centers and programs across Yale University and beyond.

LEAP was founded in 2019 with an awareness that we live in a pivotal moment for non-human animals and their environments: industrial animal farming is causing the most systemic animal suffering in human history while also destabilizing our planet through gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pathways; wildlife is quickly disappearing in what has been called Earth’s sixth great extinction event at the same time that new discoveries about what animals think and feel are overturning past beliefs about human exceptionalism; and new biological and computer science technologies may change our definition of what it means to be a person or even what it means to be alive. Nonetheless, as our powers over animals and the planet have been amplified exponentially by industry and technology, our laws regarding animal and environmental protection remain outdated, insufficient, or non-existent.

LEAP’s purpose at Yale Law School is to help respond to these urgent challenges with thoughtfulness and action. In 2024, the Program changed its name from the Law, Ethics & Animals Program to the Law, Environment & Animals Program to better reflect the Program’s long-standing focus on issues impacting both animals and the environment in which all animals – human and non-human – exist. The Program’s acronym remains the same, as does our conviction that humanity’s relationship with non-human animals is fundamentally a test of our ethics.

LEAP was founded on the belief that studying humanity’s relationships with the living world forces our society to address vital questions about human power, the consciousness of animals, the conscience of humankind, and the consequences of human action for all living beings. In humanity’s relationship with animals, humans hold all the power. How we use our power over animals is a vital test of our moral character and stewardship of life on this planet — and of the laws and policies that shape our actions.

LEAP’s approach to animal and environmental law is expansive and creative. We seek to engage an increasing number of exceptional thinkers, doers, and leaders from a broad array of disciplines to think about, understand, and develop new strategies to help animals and ecosystems. When we say "animal law" at Yale Law School, we include environmental law, labor law, immigration law, health law, consumer protection law, antitrust law, media freedom law, and many more fields, as each can be harnessed in new ways to help animals, people, and the environment.

LEAP focuses on responding to systemic and industrialized abuses of animals, rather than one-off acts by individuals, and on advancing solutions that benefit multiple stakeholders, including people, who are harmed by humanity’s treatment of animals and the environment. Law never happens in a vacuum, so LEAP simultaneously works to advance thoughtful scholarship, new ideas, powerful storytelling, and new voices that expand society’s moral imagination about, appreciation of, and humility towards the more-than-human world.

LEAP is supported by generous gifts, including from The Quinn Foundation, Chuck and Jennifer Laue, Directors; the Brooks McCormick Jr. Trust for Animals Rights Law and Policy; the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy, Inc.; Animal Welfare Trust; and an anonymous founding donor.  
 

Banner photo credit: Steffen M. Olsen/DMI