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.

The status of animals as legal property is an outdated common law construct that governs our legal– and in many ways social and cultural– relationships with animals.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.

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.

While litigation has long been a tool for animal protection, it is increasingly presenting innovative opportunities for change. Panelists will discuss recent animal law litigation through the lens of first-hand experience, with an emphasis on practical insight.

Using legislation to protect animals is a worldwide effort. This panel will cover animal protection legislation with an international focus, to learn how work to protect animals in the United States Congress compares with similar efforts across the globe – from the United States to Canada, and from the European Union to Australia.

One Health is a movement to link human, animal, and ecosystem health. Calls for a global, trans-disciplinary approach resound in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which laid bare the extent of our exposure to zoonotic disease spillover. From wild animal markets, to roadside zoos, to the wildlife trade, the link between human health and our exploitation of wild animals is clear. This panel will discuss the risks and regulatory responses to zoonotic disease in an effort to prevent future pandemics.

Panelists from diverse backgrounds and cultures will share ways in which they are advocating for animals, while building community and sometimes challenging conventional norms. This session will provide a glimpse into the future of animal advocacy.

For animals harmed by criminal cruelty, the unusual legal issues, disproportionate complexity, and animal-specific needs implicated by their cases make giving voice to the animals’ interests particularly important. Five years ago, Connecticut opened a new front in this effort with the passage of Desmond’s Law, which enables pro-bono attorneys and law students to appear in court on behalf of animal victims of cruelty. In subsequent years interest in such Courtroom Animal Advocate Program laws has grown across the nation. Join our speakers for a discussion touching on the past, present, and future of CAAP laws — and their transformative potential for legal advocacy in cruelty cases.

Animal neglect takes many forms, and can be conflated with unwillingness to provide care to an animal. Panelists will use case studies to demonstrate how enforcement agencies, in their community caretaking role, can utilize various means of responding to reports of animal neglect in the effort to preserve a healthy human-animal bond before the circumstances have criminal implications. This panel will discuss community approaches to meet the challenge of preserving the bond through access to veterinary care, food distribution, education, and community outreach.

Attorneys must navigate unique, often complicated, legal questions in animal law every single day. Russ Mead, animal law ethics expert, will lead attendees through a fun, engaging hypothetical story while examining the challenges and dilemmas that can occur as an animal protection lawyer. The Model Code of Professional Responsibility will be applied and one hour of ethics credit will be available.

The private sector is a major player in influencing behavior change towards animals. Leaders in this sector will share how they’re transforming the world through investing in and leading plant-based companies. In this session, panelists will discuss trends, opportunities, challenges, and the unique legal hurdles experienced by the plant-based market sector of businesses and investors.

Scientific and medical experiments conducted on animals are often invasive, painful, and fatal. Experiments are often justified with claims that they are necessary for human health and scientific advancement. But innovations in research technology and methodology are challenging this claim of necessity and proving that we do not need to subject animals to experiments to achieve advances in science and medicine. This roundtable will discuss how replacing animal experimentation with non-animal alternatives will result in more effective and relevant human-specific results, and how law and policy can shift the invalid assertion that we have no choice but to experiment on animals.

The American Bar Association (ABA) is at the forefront of shaping policy and public opinion regarding our relationship with animals. Through innovative resolutions addressing a wide array of contemporary issues, the ABA is challenging assumptions that its motto of “pursuing justice” is limited to humans. This panel will discuss this evolution and how ABA resolutions are making a positive difference for the common good, including for animals and the environment. The panel also highlights how one such resolution is paving the way for what would be the world’s first treaty to consider the welfare of animals and discusses how attendees can advance this cause.

Humane education seeks to build empathy and to find holistic solutions to injustices impacting people, animals, and the environment. The panel will explore how important topics such as overpopulation and climate change can provide an avenue for discussing our complicated relationship with animals; highlight direct work with children around the world, and showcase existing resources for incorporating humane education into curricula and community discussions. Presenters will point to existing humane education laws in the United States and how to strengthen their impact.