Animal Rights Law - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 - Animal Rights as a Social Justice Movement

Introduction

For critical distinction of the distinction between political/legal movements and “moral crusades” as applied to animal protection, see: Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker, “Bringing the State into Animal Rights Politics” in Paola Cavalieri (ed), Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-52120-0_8, and Kim Stallwood, “Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals?”, in Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade and Andrew Woodhall (eds), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues (Springer 2017), available at https://kimstallwood.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Stallwood-Kim-Ethical-and-Political-Final-Draft-PDF.pdf

For a general theoretical overview of law and social movements, see: Michael McCann, ‘Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives’ (2006) 2 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 17, available at https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805.105917

For an argument that legal animal advocates can foster a more effective social movement in defence of animals–whether or not they deploy the concept and terminology of animal rights– by appealing to law, including by denying the legality of animal farming, see: Michael Gold, ‘The Ubiquitous Acceptance of an Exterminatory Legality: Rights, Framing, and Legal Opposition to Animal Farming’ (Master of Laws thesis, University of Toronto 2022), available at https://hdl.handle.net/1807/125493

For a description of standard critiques of how appealing to law can be detrimental for social movements, see: Orly Lobel, ‘The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics’ (2007) 120 Harvard Law Review 937 at 938-958, available at https://harvardlawreview.org/2007/02/the-paradox-of-extralegal-activism-critical-legal-consciousness-and-transformative-politics/

For a general overview of reciprocity between social movements and legal change, with cautionary warnings of the effects of institutionalizing social movement demands in law, see: Gary Coglianese, ‘Social Movements, Law, and Society: The Institutionalization of the Environmental Movement’ (2001) 150 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 85 at 85-88, 108-118, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3312913

For sophisticated analyses of how social movements and law can constructively and reciprocally further social justice, within American constitutional law scholarship but with generalizable insights, see: Douglas NeJaime, ‘Constitutional Change, Courts, and Social Movements’ (2013) 111 Michigan Law Review 877, available at https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol111/iss6/4, Reva B Siegel, ‘Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The Case of the De Facto Era’ (2006) 94 California Law Review 1323 at 1323-1332, 1350-1366, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20439068, and Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, ‘Changing the Wind: Notes Toward a Demosprudence of Law and Social Movements’ (2014) Cornell Law Faculty Publications, Paper 1212, available at https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/changing-the-wind-notes-toward-a-demosprudence-of-law-and-social-movements

For arguments that socially marginalized or powerless groups can (for social movement purposes) access and transform legal discourse, language, and meanings (inside or outside institutional legal settings), including about rights, see: Martha Minow, ‘Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover’ (1987) 96 The Yale Law Journal 1860, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/796400, and Mari J Matsuda, ‘Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations’ (1987) 22 Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 323, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10125/65944

For an argument about the role legal scholarship can play in furthering social justice, see: Amna A Akbar, Sameer M Ashar, and Jocelyn Simonson, ‘Movement Law’ (2021) 73 Stanford Law Review 821, available at https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/movement-law/#:~:text=Amna%20A.,Ashar%20%26%20Jocelyn%20Simonson%20*&text=In%20contrast%20to%20law%20and,to%20work%20alongside%20social%20movements

The Animal Rights Movement as Abolitionist

For a general background on anti-slavery abolitionism, see: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Oxford University Press 1999), available at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-problem-of-slavery-in-the-age-of-revolution-1770-1823-9780195126716?cc=gb&lang=en&

For a treatment of the relevance of cultural traditions as resources for courts to draw on, focusing on Somerset v Stewart, see: Paul Waldau, ‘Will the Heavens Fall? De-Radicalizing the Precedent-Breaking Decision’ (2001) 7 Animal Law 75, available at https://www.animallaw.info/article/will-heavens-fall-de-radicalizing-precedent-breaking-decision

For an historical overview of Somerset, including background on some of the British reformers, see: William M Wiecek, ‘Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the Legitimacy of Slavery in the Anglo-American World’ (1974) 42 The University of Chicago Law Review 86, available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol42/iss1/4

For a discussion of how anti-slavery informs Steven Wise’s outlook and legal strategy, see: Angela Fernandez, ‘Legal History and Rights for Nonhuman Animals’ (2018) 41 Dalhousie Law Journal 197, available at https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/dlj/vol41/iss1/8/

For a comparison of human slavery and animal oppression as a form of slavery, see: Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (Mirror Books 1996), available at https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-dreaded-comparison-human-and-animal-slavery/author/spiegel-marjorie/

Animal Rights and Connections with Other Rights Movements

For an in-depth discussion of a structural approach to oppression, see: Iris Marion Young and Danielle S Allen, ‘Five Faces of Oppression’, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press 2011), available at https://wmbranchout.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/five-faces-of-oppression-iris-young.pdf

For an argument that theorisations of extreme oppressions—evil and atrocity—can apply to the treatment of animals, see: Guy Scotton, ‘Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory’ in Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade and Andrew Woodhall (eds), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues (Springer 2017), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_13

For overviews on intersectionality as a methodological framework, see: Kimberle Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ (1991) 43 Stanford Law Review 1241, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039, and Catharine A MacKinnon, ‘Intersectionality as Method: A Note’ (2013) 38 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1019, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669570

For a discussion of the treatment of animals utilising notions of oppression and intersectionality, see: Margo DeMello, ‘Human Oppression and Animal Suffering’, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (2nd edn, Columbia University Press 2021), available at https://doi.org/10.7312/deme19484-015

For an argument that animal rights has been unjustly ignored by left progressive social movements, see: Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, ‘Animal Rights, Multiculturalism, and the Left’ (2014) 45 Journal of Social Philosophy 116, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12047

Learning lessons

For a concise but wide-ranging review of the strategies the animal rights movement uses to garner social support, see: Lyle Munro, ‘The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature (2012) 6 Sociology Compass 166, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00440.x

For literature about social movement framing, which refers to how social movement activists can effectively portray their cause to various audiences with a goal of inducing sympathy for and participation in the movement, see: Robert D Bedford and David A Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’ (2000) 26 Annual Review of Sociology 611, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/223459, and Paul Almeida, ‘The Framing Process’, Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization (University of California Press 2019), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvd1c7d7

For applications of framing to animal rights advocacy, see: Lyle Munro, ‘Animal Abuse as a Social Problem’; ‘The Animal Problem in Social Context’; ‘Mobilising Emotions: Affective Work in Animal Protection’, Confronting Cruelty: Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement (Brill 2005), available at https://brill.com/view/title/11767, Sherry F Colb and Michael C Dorf, ‘Strategy’, Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (Columbia University Press 2016), available at http://cup.columbia.edu/book/beating-hearts/9780231175142, and Carrie Packwood Freeman, Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights (Rodopi 2014), available at https://brill.com/view/title/27896

For a discussion of social norms as a supplementary perspective on social movements, see: Cristina Bicchieri and Hugo Mercier, ‘Norms and Beliefs: How Change Occurs’ in Maria Xenitidou and Bruce Edmonds (eds), The Complexity of Social Norms (Springer 2014), available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05308-0_3

For an application of social norms to animal treatment, see: Nicolas Delon, ‘Social Norms and Farm Animal Protection’ (2018) 4 Palgrave Communications 1, available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0194-5

For an argument that the success of the social justice movement for animals will depend on the movement’s ability to develop social norms, see: Jerry L Anderson, ‘Protection for the Powerless: Political Economy History Lessons for the Animal Welfare Movement’ (2011) 4 Stanford Journal of Animal Law and Policy 1, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1946337

For an account of how law can influence and shape social norms, see: Janice Nadler, ‘Expressive Law, Social Norms, and Social Groups’ (2017) 42 Law & Social Inquiry 60, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/lsi.12279. For an analysis of social norms and human rights (as an analogy for animal rights), see: Deborah A Prentice, ‘The Psychology of Social Norms and the Promotion of Human Rights’ in Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks and Andrew K Woods (eds), Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2012), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371895.003.0002

Conclusion

For a broad overview of the animal rights movement in America, with chapters covering diverse social movement issues, from history, strategy, to influential personalities and more, see: Emily Patterson-Kane, Michael Patrick Allen, and Jennifer Eadie, Rethinking the American Animal Rights Movement (Routledge 2022), available at https://www.routledge.com/Rethinking-the-American-Animal-Rights-Movement/Patterson-Kane-Allen-Eadie/p/book/9781138915107

For a book-length reflection on strengths and drawbacks of deploying the concept and terminology of animal rights by advocates for animals, see: Helena Silverstein, Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights Movement (University of Michigan Press 1996), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.14354