Baldwin on Rawls and Animal Moral Personality @GuyJBaldwin

Guy Baldwin, Cambridge Faculty of Law, has published Rawls and Animal Moral Personality at 13 Animals 1238 (2023). Here is the abstract.

The relationship between animal rights and contractarian theories of justice such as that of Rawls has long been vexed. In this article, I contribute to the debate over the possibility of inclusion of animals in Rawls’s theory of justice by critiquing the rationale he gives for their omission: that they do not possess moral personality. Contrary to Rawls’s assumptions, it appears that some animals may possess the moral powers that comprise moral personality, albeit to a lesser extent than most humans. Some animals can act in pursuit of preferences and desires (and communicate them non- verbally), which might be taken as implicitly selecting a conception of the good; further, scientific research demonstrating inequity aversion and social play behaviors suggests that some animals can have a sense of justice relating to their own social groups. I conclude that Rawls’s theory needs to acknowledge any animals that can be considered to meet the threshold of moral personality, while the concept of moral personality as a range property may also require reconsideration.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Guerra-Pujol, Champnella, Mayo, Travers, and Vitulli on Teaching Tiger King @lawscholar

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, Christiana Champnella, Benjamin Mayo, Morgan Travers, and Antonella Vitulli, all of the University of Central Florida, have published Teaching Tiger King. Here is the abstract.

When our home institution moved all instruction online in response to the global pandemic, we began redesigning our business law survey course from scratch. Specifically, we decided to use the popular docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness to explore the legal and ethical environments of business with our undergraduate students. We deliberately chose this surprise-hit TV show in order to make our online course as relevant, timely, and engaging as possible. The remainder of the paper will describe the contents of each module of the course, explore their relation to Tiger King, and explain the logic of our design choices.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Legal Beagles and Other Artistic Animals @yalelawlibrary

From Yale Law Library, an exhibit featuring animals in law books (via @montserratlj). Is this the sort of thing that helped inspire the wonderful Doreen Cronin?

The Law of the Wild

New Mexico State University President Barbara Couture posted this video encounter between her felines Petey and Ricky and a beautiful (but of course wild and anonymous) bobcat, who visited her back yard recently. I dub him or her Robin. Dr. Couture narrates the visit, but even without the voiceover, I understand the indoor kitties's bemusement at the outdoor kitty's lack of comprehension of the law of trespass. When are their humans going to do something?

[Via the Chronicle of Higher Education's Tweed].

A Jury of Her Peers, Domestic Abuse and Animal Abuse

Caroline Anne Forell, University of Oregon School of Law, has published "Using a Jury of Her Peers to Teach About the Connection Between Domestic Abuse and Animal Abuse," in volume 15 of Animal Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

In this essay I examine Susan Glaspell's short story A Jury of Her Peers in the context of teaching about the connection between domestic violence and animal abuse in an Animal Law course. I discuss how Glaspell's story, in which the motive for a woman killing her husband is his killing of her pet bird, enables students to better understand the perspective of battered women who behave in certain ways because they have pets. I pose several questions concerning how the law would and should respond when a battered woman reacts with violence to the killing or serious injury of her pet. I also review the legal options that may be available today to battered women who have companion animals in contrast to the past.

Download the article from SSRN here.