Animal Rights Law - Chapter 8
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Chapter 8 - Animal Rights as a Social Justice Movement

  1. Introduction
  • For an argument that legal animal advocates can foster a more effective social movement in defence of animals–whether or not they deploy the concept and terminology of animal rights– by appealing to law, including by denying the legality of animal farming, see: Michael Gold, ‘The Ubiquitous Acceptance of an Exterminatory Legality: Rights, Framing, and Legal Opposition to Animal Farming’ (Master of Laws thesis, University of Toronto 2022), available at https://hdl.handle.net/1807/125493
  • For a general overview of reciprocity between social movements and legal change, with cautionary warnings of the effects of institutionalizing social movement demands in law, see: Gary Coglianese, ‘Social Movements, Law, and Society: The Institutionalization of the Environmental Movement’ (2001) 150 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 85 at 85-88, 108-118, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3312913
  • For arguments that socially marginalized or powerless groups can (for social movement purposes) access and transform legal discourse, language, and meanings (inside or outside institutional legal settings), including about rights, see: Martha Minow, ‘Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover’ (1987) 96 The Yale Law Journal 1860, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/796400, and Mari J Matsuda, ‘Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations’ (1987) 22 Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 323, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10125/65944
  1. The Animal Rights Movement as Abolitionist
  • For an historical overview of Somerset, including background on some of the British reformers, see: William M Wiecek, ‘Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the Legitimacy of Slavery in the Anglo-American World’ (1974) 42 The University of Chicago Law Review 86, available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol42/iss1/4
  1. Animal Rights and Connections with Other Rights Movements
  • For an argument that theorisations of extreme oppressions—evil and atrocity—can apply to the treatment of animals, see: Guy Scotton, ‘Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory’ in Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade and Andrew Woodhall (eds), Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues (Springer 2017), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_13
  • For overviews on intersectionality as a methodological framework, see: Kimberle Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ (1991) 43 Stanford Law Review 1241, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039, and Catharine A MacKinnon, ‘Intersectionality as Method: A Note’ (2013) 38 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1019, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669570
  • For a discussion of the treatment of animals utilising notions of oppression and intersectionality, see: Margo DeMello, ‘Human Oppression and Animal Suffering’, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (2nd edn, Columbia University Press 2021), available at https://doi.org/10.7312/deme19484-015
  • For an argument that animal rights has been unjustly ignored by left progressive social movements, see: Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, ‘Animal Rights, Multiculturalism, and the Left’ (2014) 45 Journal of Social Philosophy 116, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12047
  1. Learning lessons
  • For a concise but wide-ranging review of the strategies the animal rights movement uses to garner social support, see: Lyle Munro, ‘The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature (2012) 6 Sociology Compass 166, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00440.x
  • For literature about social movement framing, which refers to how social movement activists can effectively portray their cause to various audiences with a goal of inducing sympathy for and participation in the movement, see: Robert D Bedford and David A Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’ (2000) 26 Annual Review of Sociology 611, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/223459, and Paul Almeida, ‘The Framing Process’, Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization (University of California Press 2019), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvd1c7d7
  • For applications of framing to animal rights advocacy, see: Lyle Munro, ‘Animal Abuse as a Social Problem’; ‘The Animal Problem in Social Context’; ‘Mobilising Emotions: Affective Work in Animal Protection’, Confronting Cruelty: Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement (Brill 2005), available at https://brill.com/view/title/11767, Sherry F Colb and Michael C Dorf, ‘Strategy’, Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (Columbia University Press 2016), available at http://cup.columbia.edu/book/beating-hearts/9780231175142, and Carrie Packwood Freeman, Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights (Rodopi 2014), available at https://brill.com/view/title/27896
  • For a discussion of social norms as a supplementary perspective on social movements, see: Cristina Bicchieri and Hugo Mercier, ‘Norms and Beliefs: How Change Occurs’ in Maria Xenitidou and Bruce Edmonds (eds), The Complexity of Social Norms (Springer 2014), available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05308-0_3
  • For an application of social norms to animal treatment, see: Nicolas Delon, ‘Social Norms and Farm Animal Protection’ (2018) 4 Palgrave Communications 1, available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0194-5
  • For an argument that the success of the social justice movement for animals will depend on the movement’s ability to develop social norms, see: Jerry L Anderson, ‘Protection for the Powerless: Political Economy History Lessons for the Animal Welfare Movement’ (2011) 4 Stanford Journal of Animal Law and Policy 1, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1946337
  • For an account of how law can influence and shape social norms, see: Janice Nadler, ‘Expressive Law, Social Norms, and Social Groups’ (2017) 42 Law & Social Inquiry 60, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/lsi.12279. For an analysis of social norms and human rights (as an analogy for animal rights), see: Deborah A Prentice, ‘The Psychology of Social Norms and the Promotion of Human Rights’ in Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks and Andrew K Woods (eds), Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2012), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371895.003.0002
  1. Conclusion

  • For a book-length reflection on strengths and drawbacks of deploying the concept and terminology of animal rights by advocates for animals, see: Helena Silverstein, Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights Movement (University of Michigan Press 1996), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.14354