Prefigurative Animal Law

<div> <p>What are the qualities of a future in which humans and animals coexist in ways that foster mutual respect, reciprocal care, and even joy? And how might law, broadly conceived, help facilitate the realization of such a utopian multispecies future? This Article attempts to answer these questions by introducing the concept of “prefigurative animal law,” which we define as the experimental use of legal concepts and categories to instantiate a world in which human relationships with nonhuman animals are respectful, just, compassionate, and non-exploitative.</p> <p>The term “prefiguration” has recently gained traction in social movement activism and scholarship. It describes the activist technique of actualizing a future utopia in the here and now through experimental modes of living and relating to others. In recent years, critical legal theorists have explored how prefiguration arises in legal practice, especially in contexts where social movements are rethinking fundamental legal categories such as rights, gender, criminality, and property. Something similar is afoot in the animal justice movement. Activists are breaking into breeding facilities and factory farms to rescue animals, aspirationally claiming they have a “right to rescue.” Animal sanctuaries are reframing the care they provide to animals as a form of multispecies solidarity that challenges the traditional property status of their nonhuman community members. And professors and students are using animal law courses as opportunities to build new ways of relating to each other, to nonhumans, and to law itself.</p> <p>This Article names, documents, and defends this emerging trend, through which the animal justice movement uses the legal system and legal concepts to “build the new in the shell of the old,” as the Industrial Workers of the World once put it. We argue that activists, lawyers, and scholars are prefiguring the multispecies future they wish to see, and they are doing so in ways that engage with, but go well beyond, the legal status quo.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>This Article’s analysis of prefigurative animal law makes several novel contributions to the literature on social movements, prefiguration, and law. First, it extends the concept of prefigurative legalities to the nonhuman world and to the burgeoning field of animal law. Second, in doing so, it builds upon the current scholarship on prefiguration by elaborating the ways that legal actors use doctrinal advocacy, micro-practices of care, and pedagogical relationships as prefigurative tools. Third, it provides a novel framework for analyzing three important concepts in animal law: the right to rescue, the legal sociology of sanctuaries, and animal legal pedagogy.</p> </div><i><span><br></span></i><span></span>