The Theological and Ethical Grounds against Keeping Elephants Captive

As set forth below, animal theology experts Dr. Andrew Linzey and Dr. Clair Linzey of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics believe that Petitioner Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. (“NhRP”) has made a prima facie case that the elephants confined at Fresno Chaffee Zoo in Fresno, CA—Nolwazi, Amahle, and Mabu—are entitled to habeas corpus relief. Accordingly, we respectfully urge the Supreme Court of California to issue an order to show cause in this matter

Awakening a Sleeping Giant: Creating a Quasi-Private Cause of Action for Revoking Corporate Charters in Response to Environmental Violations

Individuals who wish to carry on a business as a corporation have been subject to procedures which have evolved from colonial American special chartering to the present day process of incorporating according to applicable state general incorporation statutes. Through the process of incorporation, corporate owners gain access to limited liability and the corporation is granted the judicial legal fiction of personhood, which guarantees a corporation many of the same constitutional rights individuals are entitled to under United States law. While the corporate entity does receive many benefits from its personhood status, it very often gains benefits above those of normal citizens. Although a corporation is held liable for all of its actions, corporations often violate federal and state environmental laws and continue to operate unscathed. Corporate liability for environmental violations, although extensive, does not harm many corporations as they are able to pass the totality of their overall costs on to the consumer. The power of the Attorney General of a state to revoke corporate charters, and thereby end the corporate life, may be the only effective deterrent for corporate polluters

Constructing Education: 1961-69

The 1960s were a time of great change and growth in New Zealand's tertiary eduction sector, and the university-based discipline of architecture was in no way exempt from this progress. In response to the Parry Report of 1959-1960, the New Zealand government passed the 1961 Universities Act, which dissolved the federated University of New Zealand. This Act opened the way for the independence of the four universities of Auckland, Victoria, Canterbury and Otago, and the two allied agricultural colleges of Massey and Lincoln. Under the federated university system, Auckland University College had been the centre of architectural training, and had delivered extramural course through colleges in the other centres. As the "disproportionate number" of extramural and part-time study had been criticisms levelled by the Parry Report, it was obvious that another School of Architecture would now be required, but where? Ever an argumentative association, members of the New Zealand Institute of Architects engaged in a lively debate on the choice, positing Victoria University in Wellington, and Canterbury University in Christchurch, as the major contenders. By the end of the decade university-based architectural training would expand at both Auckland and (the new) Wellington Schools, New Zealand's first PhD in Architecture would be conferred on Dr John Dickson, and many of the careers of architects and architectural academics who went on to construct the discipline as it is today, had begun

The Auckland School of Music, Post-Modernism & Nervous Laughter

In 1984, the book-of-the-television-show The Elegant Shed was released by Otago University Press, and subsequently reviewed by Libby Farrelly in New Zealand Architect (1985) 2:39-40. Declaring the cover "wholly seductive ... glutinous sensuality," but its contents only "occasionally brilliant," Farrelly asks a lot of a not very big volume: to be "a definitive treatise on New Zealand's architecture." Though concluding that such a demand was "unsupporting" Farrelly's persistent fear is that David Mitchell and Gillian Chaplin lacked a "valiant idea." The review included the plan of Hill, Manning, Mitchell Architects' design for the Auckland School of Music. Citing Mitchell's comment in The Elegant Shed that "there was no logical connection between the side of a grand piano and the shape of a noise deflecting wall," Farrelly warns that such arbitrary aesthetics condemns architecture to mere "applique." Though "applique" is not, strictly speaking, collage, patching together is an apt description of the design process evident in the Music School plan. In their description of the design Hill, Manning, Mitchell Architects tauntingly declared that the project contains elements of "Baroque, Spanish Mission and Post-Modern" architecture (New Zealand Architect (1981) 5/6:1-3), and suggested that their transition from being "straight-line modernists" to "sensuous and baroque... [is] not unexpected in middle age." This paper will discuss Manning & Mitchell's design of the Auckland Music School in the context of their own writings and seminal international texts on the post-modern architecture, Learning From Las Vegas (1972) and Complexity and Contradiction (1966) by Robert Venturi et al. and Colin Rowe's Collage City (1978). I will argue that the hardest thing for architecture to bear/bare, especially New Zealand architecture, is a sense of humour

«Enemies of human beings» : Josep Ferrater Mora on blood fiestas

Ferrater Mora maintained that «an enemy of animals is another way of being an enemy of human beings», and similarly many famous thinkers from Aquinas to Kant have held that cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to humans. But how precisely are we to understand this connection? This paper reviews the work of Brian Klug, Thomas I. White, Jonathan Edwards, and James Gustafson, and suggests that cruelty to animals should be rightly characterised as a «degradation» arising from multidimensional deficiency: (i) a failure of perception, resulting in (ii) an enfeebled intellect, and (iii) a contracted, shrivelled sensitivity. If true, animal abuse should be taken with greater seriousness by moralists, if only because there is an ineradicable human interest in curbing our degradation of animals. Indeed, there is now mounting medical, psychological, and statistical evidence of the link between animal cruelty and human anti-social behaviour.Ferrater Mora afirmava que ser «un enemic dels animals és una altra manera de ser un enemic dels éssers humans», així com molts pensadors il·lustres des de Tomàs d'Aquino fins a Kant han sostingut que la crueltat envers els animals condueix a la crueltat envers els humans. Però, com hem d'entendre exactament aquesta connexió? Aquest article examina l'obra de Brian Klug, Thomas I. White, Jonathan Edwards i James Gustafson, i suggereix que la crueltat envers els animals s'hauria de caracteritzar pròpiament com una «degradació » que emergeix d'una deficiència multidimensional: (i) un error de percepció, que produeix (ii) un intel·lecte feble, i (iii) una sensibilitat reduïda i esmorteïda. Si això fos cert, el maltractament dels animals hauria de ser considerat amb molta serietat pels moralistes, encara que només fos perquè hi ha un interès humà irrenunciable a posar fi a la nostra degradació dels animals. De fet, hi ha actualment una enorme evidència mèdica, psicològica i estadística del vincle entre la crueltat cap als animals i un comportament humà antisocial

John Sidney Swan: a genuine article

The architect John Sidney Swan (1874-1936) represents a little represented group in the history of New Zealand architecture. At the establishment of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in 1905, Swan was one of few architects present, along with William Gray Young (1895-1962), who had been trained in New Zealand through the article system. While training "on the job" was a common occurrence in the early development of the building industry in this country, few of these architects achieved great renown. Swan however, was a prominent architect in his day, designing Erskine Chapel in Island Bay (1906), Saint Gerard's Church in Mount Victoria (1908) and an unbuilt proposal for a Roman Catholic Basilica in Dufferin Street (1912). This renown may have been due to Swan's mentor, Fredrick de Jersey Clere, the vocal English émigré architect. However, this mentorship does not wholly explain Swan's prolific, and sometimes eccentric practice. This paper is part of an ongoing project to document Swan's work, and develop an understanding of his particular style, which, on the one hand, reflects an awareness of the contemporary English fashions, and yet, on the other, rejoices in an almost theatrical excessiveness, quite contrary both to the evolving architectural austerity of modernism, and Clere's more restrained style

‘The Powers That Be’: Mechanisms that Prevent us Recognising Animal Sentience

I propose to identify and illustrate what might be described as ‘the powers that be’ – four mechanisms that prevent us from recognising sentience in animals, and to indicate the challenges that should follow for future work in this field

Developing animal theology : an engagement with Leonardo Boff

This thesis seeks to develop animal theology in dialogue with Leonardo Boff, specifically in relation to his liberation, ecological, and contextual theologies. Through an examination of his major works relating to creation—notably, Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology of Our Time (1972), Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation (1981), Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (1993), and Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (1995)—this thesis unravels the anthropocentric and instrumentalist thinking that characterises Roman Catholic thought about animals. In Jesus Christ Liberator, the work of Christ is considered only in relation to humanity, which in practical terms means that human beings—their life, worth, and destiny—are God’s primary, if not exclusive, concern. In Saint Francis, despite the obvious moral example provided, Boff almost wholly ignores Francis’s significance for other creatures, and his ecological theology tantalisingly remains insufficiently attentive to the animal issue. Yet Boff’s ecological theology represents a significant shift, and at least notionally, he accepts the rights of other creatures. So paradoxically, his ecological theology is a catalyst for greater concern for creation, including animals. Boff may have influenced the thinking of Pope Francis, especially in the pope’s Laudato Si’ (2015), and has certainly engendered greater theological thinking on the environment. Finally, this thesis proposes a non-anthropocentric reconstruction of the Trinity as Gentleness, Solidarity, and Fraternity, reinforced by Boff’s work in Trinity and Society (1986) and Holy Trinity, Perfect Community (1988). A Trinitarian theology of animal liberation is suggested based on, inter alia, the notion of communion as being “for” creation and the idea of Triune sight. The Trinity is proposed as a model for human–animal relations