For those of you interested in the field of animal law, whether you’re a student or a practicing attorney or a law professor, there are a few incredible opportunities you might want to add to your to-do list.
The Animal Legal & Historical Center is offering five $1,000 summer research grants, thanks to funding from the Animal Legal Defense Fund. According to ALDF, “Under our grant program, students are assigned topics and they draft a paper for posting on the website along with relevant primary legal materials. The commitment is to a minimum of 100 hours to be completed before August 15, 2012.” Huge bonus? Students are able to do the work remotely (but must be enrolled in a US or Canadian-based law school). Here’s a PDF with the nitty gritty.
Or, here’s another idea. How about a Call for Papers on the subject “Animals & Issues of Law and Justice” for a special issue of Contemporary Justice Review? Titles and abstracts are due July 1, 2013. This is my favorite part of the CFP: “Contemporary Justice Review prefers articles written in accessible prose which avoids academic jargon and offers insights fostering justice in daily life …” Accessible prose? Avoiding academic jargon? Are you sure we’re talking about the field of law? It goes on, “In this context, daily life involves the range of non-human animals and non-human animal companions. The proposed issue seeks papers placing non-human animals in academic, practical, research, and other areas of interests and contexts.”
Finally, I’m gobsmacked about the next opportunity. It seems like serendipity that this should present itself (at least to me) on the same week as Earth Day, a time when I’m left wondering how the heck so many so-called “environmentalists” can so easily ignore the grave impacts that factory farming has on climate change. Well, this new project from Pace Law School gives me hope for the future and lessens the despair that sometimes creeps in for me. The Pace Environmental Law Review is devoting an entire issue to the topic of animal law! Yowsa! Specifically, the issue will be focusing on the intersection between animal rights and environmental protection. This might be the first time an environmental journal of this nature has taken on the issue of animal rights.
Since there’s little information about this on the internet machine, I’m publishing below the entire Call for Papers, as well as a bit more on the vision for this groundbreaking project:
At what point do animal rights and environmental protection overlap? Many traditional environmentalists argue against conflating the two, while animal rights activists often present them as part and parcel of the same movement. Nowhere are the two issues more interconnected than in the industrial agriculture context. Big Ag has created an environment rife with animal rights abuses, which lay at the heart of more conventionally understood environmental issues such as food safety and pollution regulation. In an effort to keep these abuses under wraps, states are increasingly passing “ag-gag” laws to prohibit the making and distribution of video footage, photographs, or audio recordings of the incidents. These laws are troubling for animal rights activists, journalists, whistleblowers, and anyone concerned with food safety.
Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR) is interested in publishing articles related to the intersection between animal rights and environmental protection, particularly but not necessarily in the agribusiness context. PELR believes this to be an important topic that is both under-explored and under-covered in traditional environmental journals. We are interested in presenting a broad range of perspectives that will help facilitate increased dialogue and greater awareness of the overlapping issues, and thus are seeking the assistance of scholars and professionals in the field. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Those interested in more information should contact Megan Hopper-Rebegea, at mhopper [at] law [dot] pace [dot] edu, or Lisa Weinstein at lweinstein [at] law [dot] pace [dot] edu. I’ve been told that there is a deadline of June 30 for article abstracts and a deadline of August 31 for articles. And here’s more on their general Guidelines for Submissions.
Now get going, chickens! It’s time to change the world for animals, and law is most certainly one way in to do just that.