Upcoming Events
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet with Ben Goldfarb
12:15PM to 1:15PM
Online
Approximately 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, but humans tend to regard them only as infrastructure for our convenience. Yet roads have far-reaching—and deadly—consequences for the nonhuman world: one million animals are killed by cars each day in the U.S. alone. Roadways also fragment wildlife populations into inbred clusters, disrupt migration for creatures from antelope to salmon, allow invasive plants to spread, and even bend the arc of evolution itself.
Rights of Nature and Rights of Animals with Kristen Stilt & Macarena Montes Franceschini
12:15PM to 1:15PM
Yale Law School, Room to be announced
The concept of rights has its skeptics. So does the concept of animal rights and perhaps even more so the rights of nature. So what happens when these rights-based arguments are combined with indigenous world views to attempt to secure the basic interests and needs of one individual animal, a community of animals, or a species of animals? Is the result a stew of legal incomprehensibility? Or an ingenious and effective argument? Or something in between?
Animal Markets and Zoonotic Disease Risk in the United States with Ann Linder
12:15PM to 1:15PM
Yale Law School, Room to be announced
The possibility that COVID-19 first infected humans at a live animal market in Wuhan, China inspired calls for countries to close these “wet markets” to mitigate zoonotic disease risk. Many calls focused on countries in Asia, but these markets operate inside the United States as well. This country is home to an extensive network of animal industries and practices that drive zoonotic disease emergence. The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of both domesticated animals and wildlife and is one of the world’s leading producers of livestock and captive wildlife.
Animal Rights Law with Sean Butler & Raffael Fasel
Do animals have legal rights? Recent court cases—from Happy the elephant in the United States to Estrellita the wooly monkey in Ecuador—have put deep questions about the ways in which animals are (not) protected by the law squarely in the public eye.
The Role of Science in Animal Protection Legislation with Lori Marino
Scientific discoveries in recent decades have shown the lives of nonhuman animals to be far more complex than humans historically believed. Yet legal protections for many nonhumans—from cetaceans to elephants to farmed animals—have not evolved alongside this expanded knowledge.
The Legal Status of Nonhuman Animals and Artificial Intelligences with Jeff Sebo
Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. Similar dynamics are emerging in human use of artificial intelligences (AIs).
Slaughterhouse Workers, Animals, and the Environment with Delcianna Winders & Elan Abrell
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on industrial slaughterhouses in the United States and their impacts on the vulnerable beings—both human and animal—they exploit. But the severity of these impacts is the result of a long history of failed regulatory oversight, which has contributed to dangerous conditions for slaughterhouse workers, environmental degradation, and severe animal suffering.
Arguing California’s Proposition 12: An Expert Panel Led by Jon Lovvorn
In 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, a ballot initiative banning the intensive confinement of egg-laying chickens, mother pigs, and veal calves raised in California and prohibiting the sale of eggs, pork, and veal in California from facilities anywhere using those practices. After multiple unsuccessful attempts by meat and egg industry trade groups to challenge the law, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of Proposition 12 on October 11 (National Pork Producers Council v. Ross).
Deadline to Apply to be a 2022-23 Law, Ethics & Animals Program Student Fellow
Apply to be a LEAP Student Fellow! The Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School is inviting applications for its 2022-2023 LEAP Student Fellows Program. Each academic year, LEAP selects a small group of Student Fellows, including both Yale Law School students and other Yale graduate and professional school students.
Challenging Carceral Logics with Lori Gruen, Justin Marceau, Reginald Dwayne Betts ’16, and Michael Braham
Carceral logics permeate our thinking about humans and nonhumans. We imagine that greater punishment will reduce crime and make society safer. We hope that more convictions and policing for animal crimes will protect animals from cruelty. But is incarcerating humans the appropriate response to violence against nonhuman animals?
Convention on Animal Protection: A Global Treaty for Animal Welfare, Public Health, and the Environment
Join LEAP for a panel with the members of the ABA International Animal Law Committee who obtained the passage of the ABA resolution on the proposed draft treaty, including the treaty’s potential to prevent pathogenic spillover and future pandemics.
Beyond Fossil Law: Climate, Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future with Ted Hamilton
Register here for the webinar link: tinyurl.com/leap-hamilton-2022
Animal Crisis: A book talk with Lori Gruen and Alice Crary
In their upcoming book, Animal Crisis, professors Alice Crary and Lori Gruen investigate “the complex social and political contexts in which animals are harmed, revealing the connections between our callous and cruel attitudes to the animal world and those same attitudes towards vulnerable human groups.” In this talk, moderated by Emma LeBlanc ’24, Crary and Gruen will lay out their novel approach to the argument that “there can be no animal liberation without human emancipation.”