Keynote: Moving Ideas from Ethics into Law
Start Date
12-10-2018 9:00 AM
End Date
12-10-2018 10:00 AM
Abstract
Dr. Favre is a former Dean of the Michigan State University Detroit College of Law. For over thirty years, he has conducted legal scholarship in the field of animal law, with a specific focus on animal rights and animal cruelty. His scholarship has challenged the construction of animals as property under law and he is a pioneer in scholarship advocating for legal personhood recognition for animals. In his ground breaking article “Equitable self-ownership for animals” published in Duke Law Journal (2000), Dr. Favre articulated a legal strategy for using existing property law concepts to create a limited form of self-ownership for animals.
Moving Ideas from Ethics into Law
This presentation will consider the process of moving easily stated ethical positions about how we should treat or not treat our animals into the world of law, where that which was clear, appears to lose its clarity. Ethics are the product of individual decisions about the treatment of animals. But, law is a group decision about the treatment of animals that inevitably inset qualifying words. Understanding why the law appears fuzzy requires a consideration of both how laws are adopted and how the law actually works to protect animals.
Keynote: Moving Ideas from Ethics into Law
Dr. Favre is a former Dean of the Michigan State University Detroit College of Law. For over thirty years, he has conducted legal scholarship in the field of animal law, with a specific focus on animal rights and animal cruelty. His scholarship has challenged the construction of animals as property under law and he is a pioneer in scholarship advocating for legal personhood recognition for animals. In his ground breaking article “Equitable self-ownership for animals” published in Duke Law Journal (2000), Dr. Favre articulated a legal strategy for using existing property law concepts to create a limited form of self-ownership for animals.
Moving Ideas from Ethics into Law
This presentation will consider the process of moving easily stated ethical positions about how we should treat or not treat our animals into the world of law, where that which was clear, appears to lose its clarity. Ethics are the product of individual decisions about the treatment of animals. But, law is a group decision about the treatment of animals that inevitably inset qualifying words. Understanding why the law appears fuzzy requires a consideration of both how laws are adopted and how the law actually works to protect animals.
