LEAP Announces Fall 2025 Speaker Series

The Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School has announced its Fall 2025 Speaker Series. The series begins Oct. 30 with a talk by author and Senior Lecturer and head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, who will discuss her work in progress: a book of biographies of individual animals, tentatively titled Encounters with Animals. Other events this fall will feature New York University primatologist Christine Webb on her new book, “The Arrogant Ape,” as well as Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law Professor Camila Bustos ‘21 on holding lawyers who choose to represent “climate wreckers” accountable. Read more about and register for all of LEAP’s fall events below.  

“Encounters with Animals” with Alexandra Horowitz

Oct. 30 at 12:10 - 1:10 pm ET
Sterling Law Building, Room 129
Register for in-person Alexandra Horowitz talk
Lunch provided

How is the world experienced by nonhuman animals? In this talk, moderated by LEAP Legal Director Daina Bray, Author and Senior Lecturer and head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College Alexandra Horowitz will discuss her work in progress: a book of biographies of individual animals, tentatively titled “Encounters with Animals.” In the book, she profiles members of nonhuman species, just as we profile the lives, occupations, and preoccupations of members of the human species. Each chapter features a distinct animal (or distinct animals), telling the tale of an aspect of their life using anecdotes, first-person observation, archival research, reports from sources, and species knowledge. During the talk, she will discuss a few of the subjects of the book and the challenges of the project, revealing the intricacies of animal experiences and the complexities of research in this area.

Horowitz is senior lecturer and head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. Author of the New York Times bestseller “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know” and four other books, she has written about topics as varied as attention, imitation, fairness, guilt, captivity, cloning, play, and footnotes. Her writing has covered topics from animal representation in children’s books to things people say to their dogs, from anthropomorphisms of animals to dogs in movies. She is currently working on her sixth book.

This event is part of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School's Fall 2025 Speaker Series. This event is co-sponsored with the Yale Animal Law Society, Yale Environmental Humanities, the Yale Environmental Law Association, the Yale Journalism Initiative, Plant Forward Yalies, and the Yale Sustainable Food Program.

“The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters” with Christine Webb

Nov. 6 at 12:10 - 1:10 pm ET
Sterling Law Building, Room 129
Register for in-person Christine Webb talk
Lunch provided

Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the Earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? In this talk, moderated by LEAP Faculty Director Doug Kysar, New York University primatologist Christine Webb, author of “The Arrogant Ape,” will outline how human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, exposing many scientific studies’ biases against other species and revealing underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life.

Webb is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she is part of the Animal Studies program. Her research is driven by growing awareness that the ecological crisis demands a profound shift in how we understand other animals and our place among them, leading to two intersecting lines of inquiry. First, her work seeks to elucidate the complex dynamics of animal social life, and to apply this knowledge to foundational questions in animal ethics and conservation. Second, she is interested in how prevailing societal norms, values, and institutions shape contemporary scientific knowledge of other animals and the environment more generally. Prior to joining NYU, Webb was a lecturer & postdoctoral fellow and research associate at Harvard University’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology.

This event is part of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School's Fall 2025 Speaker Series. This event is co-sponsored with the Yale Animal Law Society, Yale Environmental Humanities, the Yale Environmental Law Association, Plant Forward Yalies, and the Yale Sustainable Food Program.

“Representing Climate Wreckers” with Camila Bustos ’21

Nov. 19 at 12:10 - 1:10 pm ET
Sterling Law Building, Room 129
Register for in-person Camila Bustos talk
Lunch provided

In recent years, lawyers have become increasingly aware of the implications of the climate crisis for legal practice. Amidst this context, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has urged recent graduates to decline work on behalf of “climate wreckers.” In this talk, moderated by LEAP Faculty Director Doug Kysar, Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law Professor Camila Bustos ‘21 will examine how professional responsibility rules and principles in the United States should be interpreted on a warming planet, particularly in the context of attorneys representing “climate wreckers” in civil matters. She will explain how dominant approaches to attorney ethics are frustrating private governance efforts to persuade attorneys to fulfill their duty to the rule of law by securing a transition away from fossil fuels. Ultimately, she will argue, climate change requires a transformation in the practice of law, namely that lawyers choosing to represent climate wreckers should be held accountable for their decision to do so.  

Bustos is assistant professor of law at Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Her research and scholarship focus on human rights and environmental law, and her writing has appeared in the N.Y.U. Environmental Law Journal, the Connecticut Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, among others. She is a frequent presenter on climate displacement, climate law, and environmental justice, and has provided expert testimony before the Canadian Senate and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She serves as a board member of Law Students for Climate Accountability and Save the Sound.

Bustos was previously a visiting assistant professor of human rights at Trinity College and a clinical supervisor in human rights practice at the University Network for Human Rights. She also served as a term law clerk to Justice Steven D. Ecker of the Connecticut Supreme Court and as a consultant with the International Refugee Assistance Project. Bustos received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she received the Francis Wayland Prize and was a Switzer Foundation Fellow and a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. During law school, she worked at the Center for Climate Integrity, the Climate Litigation Network, and EarthRights International. She also co-founded Law Students for Climate Accountability, a national law student-led movement pushing the legal industry to phase out fossil fuel representation and support a just, livable future, and was the co-chair of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project at Yale and of the Women of Color Collective.

This event is part of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School's Fall 2025 Speaker Series. This event is co-sponsored with the Yale Animal Law Society, Yale Environmental Humanities, the Yale Environmental Law Association, Plant Forward Yalies, and the Yale Sustainable Food Program.