Animals and the Law (LAWS50122)

The subject examines the law as it affects non-human animals and their relations with humans in historical, social and ecological context. The subject covers a range of different ways in which private and public law impact on animals including as property to be owned, potential dangers to be controlled, companions to be shared, having rights and interest to be protected, as workers in a variety of fields and as resources that are used in industry, science and entertainment, as unwanted pests and as inhabitants of the wild, vulnerable to climate change, disaster and biodiversity loss.

Divided into two halves, the first half of the unit will investigate foundational questions about the legal status of animals in historical, theoretical and doctrinal perspective. Theoretical perspectives to be covered will include animal welfare, animal rights, eco-feminism, and wild law. Doctrinal perspectives will include property law, trespass, nuisance, negligence, family law, and criminal law. The second half will investigate ways in which legal policy concerning animals is evolving through case law, legislation, international law-making and advocacy on behalf of animal interests. Law reform topics may include whether and how the law should grant rights to animals, reforms to animal welfare regulation concerning and the use of animals for food, textiles, entertainment, hunting, and scientific testing, ways in which family law, criminal law, and tenancy law are changing to recognise companion animals as having unique and valuable relations with humans, and international efforts to protect domestic and wild species for environmental, biosecurity and animal welfare reasons.

Students will have the opportunity to traverse a wide range of substantive law areas and to critically examine whose interests and which social, ecological and economic values the law protects in different contexts and times and how this can change. The jurisdictional focus of the course is Australia, with some comparison with other jurisdictions and times, as well as international law.