Legal Niches

Wind, Birds and the Power Grid

Posted on January 25, 2011
David Cassuto Let’s be clear: Our hero favors alternative energy, including wind power.   However, nothing is all good and wind turbines kill birds.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that more than 400,000 birds are killed each year by blows from the blades of wind turbines...

Some Kangaroo News

Posted on January 25, 2011
David Cassuto Kangaroos are routinely brutalized and treated as pests in Australia.  This from the email regarding some recent developments: THINKK, the think tank for kangaroos, based at the University of Technology Sydney and supported by Voiceless, released two reports late last year examining the killing of kangaroos in Australia...

ALDF Scholarships for Law Students

Posted on January 19, 2011
David Cassuto Heads up, Law Students! From the ALDF website: ALDF Advancement of Animal Law Scholarships The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) Advancement of Animal Law Scholarships are available to second- and third-year law student members of our student chapters and will be awarded based upon demonstrated commitment to ALDF?s mission, “to advance the interests and [...

Lewis & Clark Animal Law Clinic: Making Things Happen

Posted on January 13, 2011
Jill Gross Earlier this week, The Oregonian, the main newspaper in Portland, OR, featured the work of Lewis & Clark Law School?s Animal Law Clinic.  Supervised by Professor Kathy Hessler, students represent non-profit organizations that advocate for animal rights and draft model legislation designed to protect animals...

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EPA Releases Emissions Data on CAFOS ? Interpretation to Follow

Posted on January 13, 2011
David Cassuto Here’s an interesting development: EPA has released data from a national study of emissions from CAFOS  that raise pigs, broiler chickens, cattle, and turkeys.  Of course, we don’t know how interesting it is because the agency has not yet interpreted the data...

AALS Animal Law Panel

Posted on January 12, 2011
David Cassuto Ok, there’s much to catch up on and this will be the first post of several.  Let’s start with the AALS Animal Law Section panel held last Saturday in San Francisco.  The conference in general was quite good.  Despite a labor action at the main conference hotel, which caused many sections (including ours) [...

Rivers, Agriculture & Climate Change

Posted on January 03, 2011
David Cassuto I’ll be a visiting professor at  Williams College this coming semester, teaching climate change law & policy as well as environmental law at the Center for Environmental Studies.  So, climate change has very much been on my mind of late...

Going Mainstream

Posted on January 02, 2011
David Cassuto The good news is it’s becoming less and less unusual and more and more mainstream to do what we do.  The bad news is that the need grows ever greater. From the Baltimore Sun: Sheriff’s deputies knocked on Roger and Sandra Jenkins’ front door in Taneytown early one Saturday in January to serve [...

Should Michael Vick Own a Dog?

Posted on December 26, 2010
Seth Victor My quick answer is no, but Scott Heiser from ALDF offers a more detailed explanation about what realistic enforceable judicial options exist to keep abusers like Vick (who recently stated that owning a dog will help with his rehabilitation) from owning animals...

Some Recent Scholarship

Posted on December 21, 2010
David Cassuto For this info, a shout out once again to our stellar Pace Law Librarian, Jack McNeill: Adair, Robert L.  Note.  Monkeys and horses and ferrets…oh my!  Non-traditional service animals under the ADA.  37 N. Ky. L. Rev. 415-439 (2010)...

Wolverines ? Endangered but Not ?Endangered?

Posted on December 19, 2010
David Cassuto And speaking of the Endangered Species Act… This just in: After a thorough review of all the available science, the Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the contiguous United States population of wolverine should be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)...

Wolves, Laws and Parochialism

Posted on December 15, 2010
David Cassuto I would like to say a few more words about the so-called ?State Sovereignty Wildlife Management Act and its stated intent to strip wolves of all Endangered Species Act protections.  While I have no reason to assume this bill will pass (are you listening, Congress?), the fact that officials elected to national office [...

Which Animals Matter (yet again)?

Posted on December 14, 2010
Seth Victor To paraphrase the oft quoted excerpt from Animal Farm, all cute and fuzzy animals are equal, but domesticated cute and fuzzy animals are more equal than others. This sentiment was yet again demonstrated over the last week. In one corner, we have human pets, who are mercilessly being tortured for the pleasure of [...

Bill Would Strip Wolves of ESA Protection ? Forever

Posted on December 13, 2010
Apparently still traumatized by their experiences reading Little Red Riding Hood as children, 8 members of Congress  have introduced a bill called the State Sovereignty Wildlife Management Act.  The sole purpose of HR 6485 is to render any listing of wolves as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act legally irrelevant...

Odd Animal Laws, Odd Culture

Posted on December 13, 2010
This is a guest post by Kenji Crosland, a writer for TeachStreet.  Teachstreet is a website that provides online and local classes, including classes on law and pet training classes. In the effort to preserve a certain semblance of order certain laws (don?t steal, don?t kill) have been universal since Hammurabi, although the punishments for [...

Dowd on Palin

Posted on December 09, 2010
David Cassuto Maureen Dowd on Palin’s Reality (Show): The doomed caribou gazed calmly across the Alaska tundra at Caribou Barbie. The female caribou could easily have escaped, since it took the Wasilla huntress six shots, two rifles and some help from her dad to bag her prey...

Bob Barker Named Honorary Fellow of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics

Posted on December 09, 2010
David Cassuto From the email: A richly deserved honor for Bob Barker: BOB BARKER RECEIVES ACADEMIC HONOUR The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics has selected multi Emmy award winning television personality, philanthropist, and educational pioneer, Bob Barker, as its sixth Honorary Fellow...

Animal Cruelty and the Courts: Recent Cases

Posted on December 05, 2010
Gillian Lyons Being an all purpose animal law blog, it seems appropriate to give our readers a rundown of some recent key jurisprudence dealing with cruelty towards domestic animals.  These are a few cruelty related cases decided by state courts in the last three months...

Finding the Factory Farms

Posted on December 01, 2010
David Cassuto We’re often told (because it’s true) that 10 billion animals are killed for food in this country every year.  The implications of that number for climate change, water and air pollution, and animal suffering are well-documented and appalling...

The ABA Journal Blawg 100

Posted on November 29, 2010
The more contact people have with Animal Law, the better it is for all (including and especially nonhuman animals).  That is the guiding principal of this blog.  Towards that end, the folks at the (Shameless) Marketing Desk have asked me to share the email below with you...

Some Thankful Sea Lions

Posted on November 29, 2010
Gillian Lyons According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, since 2008 40 California Sea Lions have been removed from the Bonneville Dam area (which straddles the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington.) 25 of these sea lions were euthanized, 10 were given to aquariums and 5 were captured and subsequently died (of unspecified [...

Turkey Pardons (reprised)

Posted on November 23, 2010
David Cassuto As I sat down to type some Thanksgiving thoughts, I’m found myself returning to what I wrote a couple of years ago, back when this blog was first beginning.  I’m still saddened and bewildered by the idea of pardoning turkeys...

Law Student Grant Opportunity

Posted on November 22, 2010
David Cassuto From the email — another fab-o opportunity for students interested in animal issues. Animal Welfare Trust is currently seeking applicants for our 2011 Student Grant Program. The grant provides up to $5000 per recipient for graduate students to work on an independent research project under faculty supervision or for an unpaid position within [...

Check Out The Most Recent Issue of the Journal of Legal Education

Posted on November 22, 2010
David Cassuto Because it has 4 (count ‘em 4!) articles on animal law and animal legal education including one by Friend of the Blog, Bruce Wagman.

Amidst All the Slaughter ? Abuse. Who Knew?

Posted on November 21, 2010
David Cassuto From the morbid irony desk: In this article about the demoralizing struggles of an animal activist in the Arab world, we learn that: At the Basateen slaughterhouse, near the vast cemetery known as the City of the Dead, butchers stride about in knee-high rubber boots, surrounded by lakes of feces, blood and urine...

White-tailed Deer and Valley Forge National Park

Posted on November 21, 2010
Gillian Lyons Earlier this year, the National Park Service announced their plan to reduce the white-tailed deer population of Valley Forge National Park.  On October 4, the Service announced that the ?lethal reduction phase? was set to begin this November and would take place over the next 4 years...

Summer Job at Compassion Over Killing

Posted on November 19, 2010
David Cassuto From the email — a cool-looking summer gig. SUMMER LITIGATION INTERN POSITION Compassion Over Killing (COK) is seeking Litigation Interns for Summer, 2011 (unpaid). Compassion Over Killing is a national nonprofit (501(c)(3)) animal advocacy organization...

Recent Animal Law Scholarship

Posted on November 18, 2010
David Cassuto With a hat tip to ace Pace Law Librarian, Jack McNeil, here is some animal law scholarship published this month: ANIMAL LAW. Gregory, John DeWitt. Pet custody: distorting language and the law. 44 Fam. L.Q. 35-64 (2010). Karp, Adam P. and Julie I...

D.C. Passes Wildlife Protection Act

Posted on November 12, 2010
Gillian Lyons Earlier this week, the D.C. City Council unanimously passed B18-498, the Wildlife Protection Act.  You may be wondering exactly what type of wildlife resides within the limits of the District of Columbia and the answer, inevitably, is various species that the human species unfortunately views as ?pests...

Bee Careful

Posted on November 11, 2010
Sam Capasso I was recently made aware that Illinois is taking bees the only way they should be taken: seriously.  In the middle of July this past summer, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed Public Act 96-1028 into law, becoming effective starting January 1, 2011...

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