Legal Welfarism: The Consequences of the Property Status of Animals

FOR THE PAST DECADE, I have lectured, both in this country and abroad, at high schools, colleges, universities, professional schools, community groups, and animal protection groups about the topic of animal rights. I have debated research scientists in public forums. I have represented over a dozen of the major animal protection organizations in this country in connection with some of their most controversial cases. In 1985 I represented over one hundred animal advocates who, for the first time in the history of the National Institutes of Health, occupied that institution illegally for four days in order to force the closure of a federally funded animal laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. The sit-in, which attracted attention worldwide and caused an avalanche of mail and phone calls to pour into congressional offices, ended when then Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler ordered the lab closed for violating federal law. Since 1990 I have served with Anna Charlton as codirector of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Center. The Center is part of the curriculum of the Rutgers University Law School, and law students earn academic credit as they learn litigation skills through working on animal rights cases. The Center has been involved in dozens of legal cases involving such matters as grand jury investigations into the activities of those who allegedly remove animals illegally from laboratories, the right of a student to refuse to dissect or vivisect an animal as part of her required coursework, the right of religious groups to perform animal sacrifices, the question whether pigeon shoots constitute cruelty to animals, the constitutionality of hunter harassment statutes, and the propriety of wild-horse “management” by the federal government. In sum, I am well aware of what is at stake in the debate about animal rights and how acrimonious that debate may become on all sides. It is clear to me that despite the sharp disagreement within our society over various issues of animal protection, almost everyone—including those who directly or indirectly support various forms of animal exploitation—agrees that nonhuman animals ought not to be subjected to “unnecessary” pain and that nonhuman animals ought to be treated “humanely.” Indeed, I have yet to find a