Agenda

A downloadable PDF agenda of the 29th annual Animal Law Conference is available here.

9:30 – 10:30 a.m. PT/12:30 – 1:30 p.m. ET

What Animals Teach Us About Themselves

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Pre-recorded roundtable discussion

Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado

Dr. Mary Lee Jensvold, Associate Director and Primate Communication Scientist, Fauna Foundation

Dr. Lori Marino, Founder and President, The Whale Sanctuary Project

Dr. K-lynn Smith, Postdoctoral Researcher, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University

Moderator: Joyce Tischler, Professor of Practice, Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School

Recent studies have made significant advances in our understanding of the cognitive skills, social lives, emotional capacities, and sentience of nonhuman animals. These findings challenge long-standing assumptions and demonstrate that we have underestimated the capacities of other animals. This roundtable discussion will share some of these studies and evidence as this year’s conference theme calls us to re-examine and re-imagine our relationship with other animals.

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. PT/2:00 – 3:30 p.m. ET

Reforming the Common Law Foundations of Our Relationship with Animals

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Panel presentation with live Q&A

Owais Awan, Attorney and Advocate of the High Court of Islamabad, Pakistan

Jake Davis, Staff Attorney, Nonhuman Rights Project

The Honorable Elena Liberatori, Head of Court No. 4 in Administrative and Tax Litigation, City of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Moderator: Nicole Pallotta, Senior Policy Program Manager, Animal Legal Defense Fund

The status of animals as legal property is an outdated common law construct that governs our legal– and in many ways social and cultural– relationships with animals. In cases challenging this status, attorneys have argued that we must dismantle the current common law and recognize a legal status that considers animals as living, feeling beings capable of a wide range of positive and negative experiences. Judges are starting to agree and beginning to take apart the construct. The speakers on this panel will discuss the recent cases and decisions that are most crucial to transforming the old foundation of our legal relationship with animals.

11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PT/2:00 – 3:15 p.m. ET

Factory Farming & The Fragility of Our Food System

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Panel presentation with live Q&A

Jessica Blome, Shareholder, Greenfire Law, PC

Hannah Connor, Senior Attorney, Center for Biological Diversity

Iselin Gambert, Professor of Legal Research and Writing, The George Washington University Law School

Moderator: Daniel Waltz, Senior Staff Attorney, Animal Legal Defense Fund

The current industrial animal agricultural complex, otherwise known as factory farming, is at an extremely critical juncture. This panel will examine the devastating effects and impacts upon animal protection, human health, worker safety, and ecosystem sustainability. It will also discuss the ways in which legal and regulatory efforts to protect the animal agriculture industry—including so-called “Real Meat” laws in the US and the EU’s Amendment 171—wage linguistic and semantic battles over the meaning of “meat” and “milk.”

12:45 – 1:45 p.m. PT/3:45 – 4:45 p.m. ET

Keynote Presentation: Animal Thought, Emotion, and Culture

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Keynote presentation with live Q&A

Humans think, experience emotions, and develop cultures. Turns out, so do many other species. Drawing on his two most recent books, Becoming Wild and Beyond Words, Carl Safina will discuss cognition, emotion, and culture in non-human beings. He will show and talk about what makes us human and what makes many other species who they are. He will also talk about what is at stake in this living world, for us and for all our co-voyaging species.

Carl Safina, Ecologist and Author, Becoming Wild

Moderator: Pamela Hart, Executive Director, Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School