Legal Niches

Some Noteworthy Blogs

Posted on November 10, 2010
David Cassuto From the props desk: Top 101 Blogs to Inspire You To Protect Endangered Species. Look for us therein.

Happy Meals No More in San Francisco

Posted on November 09, 2010
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to prohibit Happy Meals (and their ilk) from having toys until the nutritional content is improved.  The mayor has promised to veto it but the 8-3 margin of passage is veto-proof.  Some skinny: “Under the proposal, restaurants would be barred from giving away the popular toys unless [...

Government Hypocrisy ? The Dairy Version

Posted on November 08, 2010
David Cassuto Amidst all the topsy turvy election results, one can easily start obsessing about the nation’s future.  Or, one can cling to the words of Lee Hays who commented on the 1980 election results by saying, “This too shall pass; I’ve had kidney stones and I know...

Animal Law Voter Initiatives: The Results

Posted on November 07, 2010
Gillian Lyons Early this week, Professor Cassuto linked us to a website which ran through all of the animal welfare based initiatives included on ballots across the country. Well, the results are in, and here they are: The Losses: Arkansas:  Capturing 83 % of the vote, Issue 1, which proposed a constitutional amendment that would [...

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Animal Law Voter Initiatives

Posted on November 02, 2010
David Cassuto Informative post here regarding various animal law-related ballot initiatives on ballots around the country,  Sadly, with the exception of Missouri’s Prop B (which deals with puppy mills), they’re pretty much all hunting related.

North Dakota Measure 2 ? Canned Hunting Contextualized

Posted on November 02, 2010
David Cassuto There’s an odd debate going on within the North Dakota agriculture industry over Measure 2, which would ban canned hunting in the state.  On the one hand are those who support the measure because they believe canned hunts  reflect badly on the animal industry and also bring the threat of disease to livestock...

Species Decline and the 10th Convention on Biological Diversity

Posted on October 27, 2010
Gillian Lyons In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly, recognizing that human activity was causing a highly accelerated rate of species extinctions, and expressing concern that such mass extinctions could have far reaching social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts passed G...

Sexual Abuse of Animals, Bodily Integrity and Property Rights

Posted on October 24, 2010
Bridget Crawford The New York Daily News reports here that a Long Beach (New York) man twice sexually assaulted a dog: [The accused] entered the apartment in the house he owned and sexually assaulted the male dog, a 23-pound Shiba Inu named Snowball, prosecutors said...

Polar Bears ? The New Canary

Posted on October 21, 2010
David Cassuto Long ago, miners used to use canaries to measure the build up of toxic gases in the mines where they were working.  If the canary died, it was time to head out because the air was dangerous.  We don’t use canaries in mines anymore...

Where Are Our Wild Horses?

Posted on October 20, 2010
Gillian Lyons  When contemplating American Icons, mustangs inevitably come to mind.  In fact, in the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, Congress stated that wild free-roaming horses are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West, which contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of [...

NYU Launches Animal Studies Initiative

Posted on October 19, 2010
David Cassuto Oh to be young again.  NYU is launching an Animal Studies Initiative.  NYU students will soon be able to minor in animal studies and the initiative will also create opportunities for interdisciplinary courses, conferences and other research projects...

New Jersey Animal Abuser Registry (follow-up)

Posted on October 18, 2010
Seth Victor Following-up from yesterday’s post, I wrote to my representatives to encourage them to enact similar legislation to Suffolk County’s. I was informed that New Jersey actually has a proposed bill before it, S-2049 and A-2917, which was introduced in June of this year...

Obama and the Endangered Species Act

Posted on October 17, 2010
Gillian Lyons During his campaign, Obama?s campaign spokesman noted that,  ?as president, Senator Obama will fight to maintain the strong protections of the Endangered Species Act.?  Just a few months after taking office, this statement rang true, when the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration?s eleventh-hour regulation which circumvented Endangered Species Act mandates by allowing [...

Sex, Animal Abuse, and the Internet

Posted on October 17, 2010
Seth Victor In Long Island, New York last Tuesday,  the Suffolk County Legislature unanimously approved a bill, sponsored by legislator Jon Cooper, creating the nation’s first registry for people convicted of animal abuse. The online registry operates in a similar fashion to the online registration required for sex offenders under Megan’s Laws...

James Coolidge Carter on The Rapaciousness of Humanity

Posted on October 14, 2010
David Cassuto James Coolidge Carter was arguably the preeminent appellate advocate of his time (he lived from 1828-1905 and was at the height of his fame at the end of the 19th century.  A Mugwump, he had strong principled views on the human condition and a tenacious belief in the beauty of the economic order...

Compassionate Children?s Literature

Posted on October 10, 2010
From the email: For immediate release: A Morning of Compassionate Children?s Literature with Farm Sanctuary at the Community Bookstore of Park Slope BROOKLYN, NY (October 9, 2010)?The Community Bookstore of Park Slope is pleased to host ?A Morning of Compassionate Children?s Literature with Farm Sanctuary...

Humans, Animals, Theology, Books

Posted on October 06, 2010
David Cassuto Looking for a 10 Best list of books on the Theology of Human/Animal Relationships?  Look no further.  It’s here.

Football, Pit Bulls, and Regaining Trust: A book review of Jim Gorant?s The Lost Dogs

Posted on October 06, 2010
Stephen Iannacone In July of 2007, after months of investigating, Michael Vick and three others were charged with the federal crime of operating an interstate dog fighting ring known as ?Bad Newz Kennels.?  Initially, Vick maintained that he only funded the dog fighting ring...

A Battle Won, Perhaps

Posted on October 05, 2010
Gillian Lyons Following up on last week?s post, on Monday, September 27th Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Richard Burr (R-NC) introduced legislation, an amendment to H.R. 5566, which will prohibit the sale of crush videos, meaning any film, video, or recording that depicts live animals being crushed, drowned, suffocated or impaled in a [...

Dietary Guidelines ? The Politics of Health

Posted on October 04, 2010
David Cassuto From the Cynicism Desk: The USDA is preparing to unveil  its most recent revision of its much maligned dietary guidelines.  Come December, we’ll see to what new levels of obfuscation and avoidance the good folks at USDA can aspire...

Mmmm, Meat Paste

Posted on October 04, 2010
David Cassuto Whoa!  So this is what becomes Slim Jims, McNuggets, hot dogs, etc.  Get the full 411 here.

Schwarzenegger?s Legacy: Skinned Animals

Posted on September 29, 2010
David Cassuto Amid all the hagiography (outside of California) for soon to be ex-Governor Schwarzenegger, comes this: he vetoed a bill that would have required clothing made with fur to be properly labeled.  Currently, so-called faux fur products are actually made of real fur, just the fur from less “desirable” animals...

The Ethics of Veganism, Cont?d

Posted on September 29, 2010
David Cassuto In keeping with my earlier promise to highlight well-argued pieces on both sides of the veganism debate, here is a piece by former vegan and author George Monbiot, which explains why he has now concluded that meat-eating (not, however, the factory farm system) is ok...

Thinking Inside the Box (Where the Mice Suffer & Die)

Posted on September 28, 2010
David Cassuto Thirty-some years ago, researchers attempting to determine if tobacco smoke was toxic put mice in boxes filled with smoke.  The mice didn’t develop cancer at the rate human smokers did.  One could conclude that tobacco was not a carcinogen but, of course, that  would be wrong...

Reconsidering Crush Videos

Posted on September 28, 2010
Gillian Lyons After the Supreme Court struck down 18 U.S.C. § 48 in United States v. Stevens for having too broad a focus (click here for Professor Cassuto?s post-mortem of that decision), there was a general feeling of dismay in the animal law community due, in part, to the fact that the law strove to [...

Some Antibiotic News

Posted on September 25, 2010
Gillian Lyons According to some sources, as much as 70 percent of the antibiotics produced in the United States are fed to animals housed in the factory farm industry, animals otherwise known as ?food product animals.?  These antibiotics are used not only to prevent the spread of disease among animals housed in small overcrowded quarters, [...

Transgenic Animals

Posted on September 22, 2010
David Cassuto I’ve been thinking about the legal and ethical issues surrounding transgenic animals lately, hoping to write something soon.  If you’re interested in the subject too, this post at the new Vet Tech blog provides all sorts of cool resources to peruse.

CT Animal Law CLE

Posted on September 20, 2010
David Cassuto From the email:

Fries, Beer, and the IUCN Colloquium

Posted on September 19, 2010
David Cassuto Belgium is pretty cool.  Ghent is an absolutely beautiful city, filled with the kind of stunning architecture that one might expect to see in European cities better known for their visual splendor.  And did you know that Ghent was the second-largest city in Europe (behind Paris) for quite a while, quite a while [...

Legal Protections for Great Apes (or Lack Thereof)

Posted on September 15, 2010
Gillian Lyons Last week, without much ado (at least from American news sources), the European Union passed a series of directives aimed at reducing the number of animals used in laboratory experiments (for BBC News? perspective, click here).  Included in those directives was a mandate ending the use of great apes in scientific research, once [...

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