Similarity or Difference as a Basis for Justice: Must Animals Be Like Humans to Be Legally Protected from Humans?

Justice may not require that animals be exactly the same as humans or that they have rights exactly coterminous with the rights of humans, but justice would require that animals receive protection in ways that match up with those similarities they share with humans that are characteristics considered essential to the understanding of what it means to be human. Stated generally, the argument is that if animals are similar to humans as to capacities and characteristics of humans that define humans, then animals should receive protections equivalent to the protections of humans because a just society treats like entities alike

Aid-in-Dying Nonprofits

In the United States, where “assisting suicide” is illegal under the great majority of state laws, nonprofit aid-in-dying organizations play important roles in legal reform and client service to those who choose to hasten death when experiencing irremediable existential and physical suffering at the end of life. Legal pathways to aid in dying rest on respect for individual autonomy in end-of-life decision-making, but they are freighted with concerns about risks to individuals who may be vulnerable to transient depression, the influence of others, and internalized beliefs that they have become a burden. This Article explores how nonprofits use different laws to ground their end-of-life assistance to clients while navigating laws that prohibit assisting suicide and the legal rules of their status as nonprofit public charities. Within those limitations, they seek legal change to support autonomous end-of-life decisions, cognizant of genuine concerns about the vulnerability of people making decisions to irreversibly end their lives and the autonomy of physicians who may not want to participate in bringing about a patient’s death. This Article concludes that these nonmedical advocacy and client service nonprofit organizations have participated in the creation of laws that actually limit fulfillment of their missions but that they will remain extremely important as long as such severe legal tension exists between autonomy and protection of vulnerable individuals, suicide is heavily stigmatized, and ending one’s own life to relieve end-of-life suffering is exclusively a “do-it-yourself” option in which an individual inexperienced at dying must self-administer a life-ending substance

Novel Food Ingredients: Food Safety Law, Animal Testing, and Consumer Perspectives

In recent years, some major food companies have publicly stated that they will no longer test their product ingredients on animals. Yet despite the availability of more reliably predictive non-animal toxicity tests, some companies continue testing novel food ingredients on animals. This Article uses the lens of a particular innovative plant-based food company’s decision to test a novel food ingredient on animals as a means of considering more generally whether any food producer has rational legal reasons for testing on animals. The Article explores FDA requirements, consumer food safety litigation, and judicial evaluation of animal test data, all of which align with lack of necessity to use animal testing to protect consumer safety. The Article presents reasons to change to more reliable non-animal tests, describes results of recent research on consumer perspectives, and identifies several avenues for reducing animal testing while improving food safety

Social Psychology and the Value of Vegan Business Representation for Animal Law Reform

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Social Psychology and the Value of Vegan Business Representation for Animal Law Reform

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Virtue Ethics and Animal Law

This essay explores virtue ethical concepts in the context of animal law theory and practice. For reasons discussed in the essay, virtue ethics may not, on its own, serve as an adequate foundation for general anticruelty statutes, but it may have application in those contexts in which sufficient sharing of values enables participants in legal reform to work through differences in moral commitments to generate at least temporarily acceptable laws. The article considers a detailed example of that type of application, based on the actual and realistic situation of legislator-requested feral cat colony caretakers’ participation in the development of ordinances that regulate the management of such colonies

Oya-Ko Shinju: Death at the Center of the Heart

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