LEAP Welcomes New Animal Agriculture Accountability Project Research Scholar
The Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School welcomes Ann Linder as a research scholar in its Animal Agriculture Accountability Project, AAAP. The AAAP is an academic and non-governmental organization partnership that seeks to accelerate the enactment and enforcement of state and local legal policy interventions to hold industrial animal agriculture accountable for its harms to people, animals, and the environment. As AAAP research scholar, Linder will prepare an assessment of potential litigation strategies challenging industrial animal agriculture’s animal welfare, labor, environmental, and other negative externalities.
Linder joins LEAP from the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, where she served as the Associate Director of Policy & Research. While at Harvard, she was the lead author of two groundbreaking, comprehensive reports examining the zoonotic disease risk posed by animal industries in the U.S4. and across 15 countries spanning six continents5. In addition to zoonoses risk, Linder’s research focuses on the intersection of animal law and criminal law, including both wildlife trafficking and crimes involving domestic animals. Her work has been published by Science, Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, and Lewis and Clark Law School, as well as the New York Bar Association. Linder currently serves on the Animal Advisory Commission for the City of Austin, which makes recommendations to the Austin City Council on how to improve the welfare of the city’s animals.
After serving as a legislative policy fellow for the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program in 2018, Linder worked with the animal protection unit for the city of Austin, Texas. Later, she was a wildlife policy analyst for the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, focusing on applications of immunocontraceptive vaccines in free-roaming horses and cervids. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School and holds an M.S. in animals and public policy from Tufts University, where she has taught animal law for the last few years.
“We have had the privilege of collaborating with Ann in the past on projects so we know firsthand what extraordinary talent and energy she brings,” said LEAP Faculty Director Doug Kysar, the Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law. “Ann’s participation will help ensure the depth and impact of this vital work.”
Founded in 2019, the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School is a multidisciplinary program dedicated to developing strategies to address industrialized animal cruelty and its impacts on the living world, and to drawing attention to the deep questions of conscience and law raised by humanity’s treatment of animals.
