Animal Law - Animal Law in Academia

Animal Law in Academia

Animal law has been taught in at least 119 law schools in the U.S., including Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Northwestern, University of Michigan, Georgetown, Duke, and Lewis & Clark and is currently taught in at least 117 schools. Animal law is also currently taught in 7 law schools in Canada. In the U.S. there are Student Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF) chapters in 132 law schools, with an additional seven chapters in Canada. SALDF chapters are student groups that are affiliated with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and share its mission to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system.

The comprehensive animal law casebook is, co-authored by Sonia S. Waisman, Bruce A. Wagman, and Pamela D. Frasch. Because animal law is not a traditional legal field, most of the book’s chapters are framed in terms of familiar subsets of law such as tort, contract, criminal and constitutional law. Each chapter sets out cases and commentary where animal law affects those broader areas.

The Animal Protection Laws of the United States of America & Canada compendium, by Stephan K. Otto, Director of Legislative Affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, is a comprehensive animal protection laws collection. It contains a detailed survey of the general animal protection and related statutes for all of the states, principal districts and territories of the United States of America, and for all of Canada; along with full-text versions of each jurisdiction’s laws.