Second Wave Animal Law and the Arrival of Animal Studies

Abstract

Many societies today reflect that animal protectionists are going beyond efforts to establish fundamental protections of the kind signaled by terms like “animal rights,” “animal welfare,” and even “animal liberation.” This Chapter uses four interrelated questions to explore this new stage of animal law: (1) how should animal law courses in law school proceed given the obvious interdisciplinary reach of the larger field of Animal Studies?; (2) what is the place in second wave animal law for answers to the root question “who, what are ‘animals’?”; (3) why is the field of “Animal Studies” important to legal education and, more broadly, education as a whole?; and, (4) What roles have personal connection with and meeting of nonhuman animals played in first wave animal law, and what roles might they play in second wave animal law, the larger field of Animal Studies and its sub-disciplines, and the educational mega-fields we know as “the humanities” and “the sciences”?