The Value of Existence

One does not read Beating Hearts passively. I found myself agreeing often, disagreeing often, and sometimes doing both at the same time. Just as frequently, the book made me reexamine my views from a perspective I had not considered before. For example, prior to reading the book, I had not explored the basis for my belief that causing the death of a living being is a morally significant act. The authors (with a post-mortem assist from Epicurus) have seen to that deficiency. This forum seems an ideal place to push that discussion a bit further

Don\u27t Be Cruel (Anymore): A Look at the Animal Cruelty Regimes of the United States and Brazil with A Call for A New Animal Welfare Agency

In the United States and around the world, animals exploited for human use suffer cruel and needless harm. The group bearing the brunt of this exploitation--agricultural animals--is routinely exempted from the largely ineffective and rarely enforced animal welfare and anti-cruelty regulations that exist today. This Article offers a comparative analysis of the agricultural animal welfare regimes of two countries with globally significant presence in the agriculture industry: the United States and Brazil. Even though the two countries approach agricultural animal welfare differently, they arrive at the same outcome: institutionalized indifference to animal suffering. To remedy the current regulatory structure, this Article proposes the creation of an independent federal agency--The Animal Welfare Agency (“AWA”)--to regulate the safety and welfare of all animals, including those used in agriculture. The AWA could significantly reduce systemic animal cruelty in both the United States and Brazil and represent an important step toward inserting morality and ethics into our relationships with animals

The Law of Words: Standing, Environment, and Other Contested Terms

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000), exposes fundamental incoherencies within environmental standing doctrine, even while it ostensibly makes standing easier to prove for plaintiffs in environmental citizen suits. According to Laidlaw, an environmental plaintiff needs only to show personal injury to satisfy Article III\u27s standing requirement; she need not show that the alleged statutory violation actually harms the environment. This Article argues that Laidlaw\u27s distinction between injury to the plaintiff and harm to the environment is nonsensical. Both the majority and dissent in Laidlaw incorrectly assume that there exists an objective standard by which a plaintiff, society or a court can measure harm or injury. Using examples drawn both from history (the Trail Smelter Arbitration (1930-41)) and fiction (Barbara Kingsolver\u27s novel Animal Dreams), this Article illustrates that the inherent contingency of language renders it impossible to define harm or injury without acknowledging the systemic perspective from which the concepts are viewed. The path to an intelligible standing doctrine lies not in focusing on this artificial opposition, but instead in acknowledging statutory violations as injurious to the social and legal system of which we all form a part. Assuming the violated statute contains a citizen suit provision, the resulting harm to the system could and should enable individuals to sue. This policy would conform the Court\u27s standing jurisprudence to the language and intent of the statutes before it. Moreover, this policy would counter the undermining of the rhetoric of environmental protection that persists so long as the Supreme Court continues its frequent yet unsuccessful efforts to retool its definition of cognizable legal injury

United States v. Stevens: Win, Loss, or Draw for Animals?

Robert J. Stevens, proprietor of “Dogs of Velvet and Steel,” was indicted for marketing dog-fighting videos in violation of 18 U.S.C. §48, a law criminalizing visual or auditory depictions of animals being “intentionally mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed” if such conduct violated federal or state law where “the creation, sale, or possession [of such materials]” takes place.” The law aimed principally at makers and distributors of “crush videos” wherein women wearing high heels and depicted from the waist down, grind small animals to death. However, the language of 18 U.S.C. §48 extended to dog-fighting as well. Stevens challenged the law as unconstitutional, claiming it violated his First Amendment right of freedom of speech. The case eventually ended up before the Supreme Court, which vacated Stevens’ conviction and ruled the law unconstitutional. This article explores what U.S. v. Stevens means for the world of animal protection and whether the Court’s decision will have lasting implications for the campaign to rein in animal cruelty. It argues that the answer is “maybe, but probably not.” In Stevens, the Court for the second time skirted the question of whether preventing animal cruelty can rise to the level of compelling state interest. Ironically, the Court’s avoidance of the issue may constitute a net positive for animal advocacy

The Evolution of the Brazilian Regulation of Ethanol and Possible Lessons for the United States

The oil shocks of the 1970s propelled the search for alternative fuel sources by oil-dependent countries. The United States and Brazil–then the two largest producers and consumers of ethanol in the world – focused intensely on biofuels as a substitute for oil, while other countries – such as Japan and European Union members – focused more on nuclear energy and other methods of power generation. However, from the 1980s onward, climate change emerged as a significant concern. This new focus on climate change revived the discussion about the need for alternative energy sources. In addition, during the 2000s, oil prices spiked anew. Political and social instability in areas of oil abundance, combined with the widespread belief that oil extraction would peak in ten or twenty years and then decline, contributed to this price volatility. Biofuels, emerged into this turbulent landscape, offering the promise of partially or completely supplanting fossil fuels. This article focuses on the Brazilian experience using ethanol as a substitute for gasoline for motor-vehicle fuel. Part I offers a brief discussion of the nature and role of biofuels. Part II details the development of ethanol regulation in Brazil, from its inception during the era of military dictatorship through the present. Part III discusses the environmental issues and criticisms concerning ethanol production and how they apply to the Brazilian model. Part IV analyzes the Brazilian experience and explains why it would be very difficult or impossible to replicate in the United States. Overall, this article portrays the difficulties and challenges the United States will face in trying to follow the Brazilian model

Meat Animals, Humane Standards and Other Legal Fictions

Law and food are distinct concepts, though the discipline (Law and Food) implies a relationship worthy of study. The conjunction (“and”) creates meaning. However, its absence also conveys meaning. For example, “meat animal” suggests that animals can be both meat and animal. This conflation has powerful legal implications. National Meat Association v. Harris (2012) makes chillingly plain the law’s indifference to whether a meat animal is alive or dead. This essay examines the way supposedly humane federal practices ignore the systematic brutalization of “food animals” as those animals get processed into marketable flesh. It concludes with some observations about why this legal blindness exists

Legal Standing for Animals and Advocates

For animal advocates, one of the most significant barriers to the courtroom is standing. In order to litigate on behalf of an animal\u27s interests in federal court, the advocate must first establish standing by meeting three requirements: (1) the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact, (2) the injury must be causally connected to the act about which the plaintiff is complaining, and (3) the court must be able to redress the injury. When it comes to non-human animals, how does an advocate demonstrate an injury to establish standing? In this panel, experts in animal litigation discuss the concept of establishing legal standing for animals and animal advocates; the panelists\u27 own experiences, including specific cases and creative methods used; and the future of legal standing for animals

Foreword

The overlap between animal law and environmental law arises because the two disciplines are fundamentally linked. One cannot talk about the environment without also discussing the nonhuman sentient beings that populate it. Indeed, as I shall discuss shortly, one of the most vexing issues for me— as a scholar working in both fields—involves my ongoing attempt to address the historical tension between the two disciplines. This volume of the Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) marks an important step on the path toward resolving those tensions and moving environmental law forward. That path will not always be smooth, nor will it be obstacle-free

Bred Meat--The Cultural Foundation of the Factory Farm

This article argues that the ability of large-scale industrial farms to commodify animals in the face of strong countervailing social forces stems in large part from the legal system’s embrace of a secularized but nonetheless deeply religious vision of human ascendancy. Within this belief system, animals comprise beings through whom we define ourselves by contrast and to whom we deny ingress to the legal system. The impulse to increase protections for nonhuman animals is offset by institutionally privileged categories of behavior that commodify nonhumans and strip them of legal defenses. The resulting lattice of laws purports to safeguard animals while instead sanctioning and enabling the practices from which they require protection