The Future of Animal Law

Abstract

Over the past five decades, animal law has undergone a remarkable evolution from an amorphous regulatory framework about animals to a comprehensive discipline for animals. David Favre is one of the leading scholars to have made a decisive contribution to the development of animal law as such. He is the author of an extensive body of scholarly work in the field of animal law, which can be found at almost every critical juncture in this discipline.1 The Future of Animal Law is Favre’s latest contribution to animal law scholarship. In this book, Favre manifests once again his comprehensive understanding of animal law with a transdisciplinary approach that goes beyond academic scholarship. He expresses concern about the scholarly work that has emerged in animal law, arguing that current animal law scholarship lacks a future perspective and suggestions for future directions (p. vii). At first glance, this seems peculiar, given that any work in the field of animal law must be inherently “forward-looking,” as such work frequently challenges existing legal institutions. However, a closer look at the book reveals that by a forward-looking approach, Favre does not just mean a progressive view. He urges animal law scholars to pay regard to certain facts, including that the political process is not driven by reason but by power, and that we therefore cannot change the status quo for all animals at the same time (pp. 5–6). In other words, Favre considers it unrealistic to expect a legal revolution of animal liberation. A forward-looking approach for him is therefore to consider what can be done within the current political sphere without aiming to change it altogether. In this respect, The Future of Animal Law is about what Favre believes is “realistically” possible in the future, at our current political juncture (p. 4).