Neither Property nor Persons | A Case for Animals as Legal “Beings”
In this episode, we chat with Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria, about her research in critical animal law. We discuss her 2021 book, Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders in which she argues for a new legal category of “beingness” for animals that transcends the inadequate legal categories of “persons” or “property.” We also dive into her 2023 article Animalization and Dehumanization Concerns: Another Psychological Barrier to Animal Law Reform, in which she highlights why a critique of human exceptionalism is essential to advancing the goals of anti-racism and decolonization.
Highlights include:
Maneesha’s personal journey into exploring the links between animal legal studies and critical animal studies, health law, reproductive ethics, feminist analysis of law, and postcolonial and critical race theory;
Deckha’s evaluation of the 2022 decision by the New York Court of Appeals with respect to the ongoing captivity of Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo, in which she outlines why the dissociation of humans from animals is counterproductive to eliminating racism and other intra-human prejudices and inequities;
How the legal classification of animals as “property” creates problems, such as commodification and objectification; meanwhile, using the “personhood” category for animals exacerbates the concept of human exceptionalism. Deckha argues for a new category of “beingness’ for nonhuman animals which recognizes their embodiment, relationality, and vulnerability;
A new six-part series documentary series targeted towards secondary school students, A Deeper Kindness: Animal Law and Youth Activism, which surveys the current field of animal law and policy through the eyes of four youth active in animal advocacy.