Animal Law Podcast #80: Teaching Animal Rights

Welcome to the Animal Law Podcast. This is Mariann Sullivan, and this week we will be doing something a little bit different. Sherry Colb is a professor at Cornell Law School where, among many other things, she teaches an animal centric course that, to my knowledge, is quite different from most of the courses relating to animals taught at law schools. Unlike the course that I teach, which is all about the all-too-fragile law purporting to protect animals, she focuses on the reasons people should attend to animals and, specifically, the reasons they shouldn’t be eating them, or using them for other purposes. Since I had never run across a course quite like this in any law school, I invited Sherry to come on and talk about it, in the hopes that other law schools might adopt this approach, in addition to the more traditional animal law courses. After our conversation, I was so glad I did and I think you will feel the same way.

Sherry F. Colb earned an A.B. from Columbia College (Valedictorian) and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before joining the Rutgers University faculty, she clerked for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. She is currently the C.S. Wong Professor of Law at Cornell University. She has co-authored a book about the connection between animal rights and zygote rights, Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights, and a book about animal rights, Mind If I Order the Cheeseburger? And Other Questions People Ask Vegans. She composes a bi-weekly column on Justia’s Verdict as well as regular posts on the blog, Dorf on Law.

View the full episode with resources here: https://ourhenhouse.org/ALP80/ The Animal Law Podcast is released by the nonprofit organization, Our Hen House. Share your thoughts with us on social media! Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@ourhenhouse).