Law Through the Eyes of Animals

This chapter considers law through the lens of critical animal studies. It specifically reimagines canonical legal cases from the perspective of the animals involved in them. Through the lens of the animals involved in the case, we examine cases in which animal interests were considered by human advocates and decided by human judges. We begin by providing a rudimentary methodological framework for how legal scholars and commentators might expand anthropocentric legal processes (such as the decision of cases) to consider the perspectives of non-human animals. This project rests at the intersection of critical animal studies and the burgeoning field of animal and biodiversity law. More broadly, we are interested in how lawyers can use the traditional tools of our field (legislation, regulation, common law, constitutional provisions, and private law) to create positive visions for new ways of more equitably co-existing with nature and non-human living beings. We are interested in reforming law to incorporate principles of interspecies equity, which requires institutional shifts away from assumed anthropocentricity through the development of new tools and techniques to integrate the interests of non-human living beings—animals specifically for this work—into the field of law.