More-than-Human Legalities: Advocating an 'Animal Turn' in Law and Society

Irus Braverman (2015). “More-than-Human Legalities.” In Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat (eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Law and Society (Wiley Press), pp. 307-321.

SUNY Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2016-022

24 Pages Posted: 7 May 2016

See all articles by Irus Braverman

Irus Braverman

University at Buffalo Law School

Date Written: December 1, 2015

Abstract

What is the role of nonhumans, and of nonhuman animals in particular, in the constitution of law? How should legal systems account for societies that include not only humans but also nonhuman entities? What are the intersections between law and nonhuman life? And how to overcome the anthropocentric biases in modern legal systems? Such questions and others may provide fertile grounds for law and society investigations. Despite the richness and complexity of these investigations, however, the law and society community has typically relegated the “question of the animal” to the discourse of animal rights. Within this discourse, legal rights are extended to certain nonhuman animals through the same liberal framework that has afforded humans’ rights beforehand: vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, and non-living entities must first cross Western law’s threshold of personhood to obtain rights. This chapter suggests, alternatively, that sociolegal scholarship could greatly benefit from moving beyond the rights discourse of animal law to a new subject of inquiry: more-than-human legalities. By acknowledging the myriad ways of being in the world, their inherent interconnections, and their manifestations in and constitutions of law, more-than-human legalities extend the advocacy-oriented scholarship of animal rights to highlight how both animality and humanness are deeply embedded in the construction of law and, reciprocally, how law is acutely relevant for constituting the animal. Indeed, while nonhumans render law’s operations – in fact, its very existence as such – possible, law also constitutes animal life and renders it meaningful in a variety of ways.

Keywords: law and society, animal studies, posthumanism, more-than-human legalities

Suggested Citation

Braverman, Irus, More-than-Human Legalities: Advocating an 'Animal Turn' in Law and Society (December 1, 2015). Irus Braverman (2015). “More-than-Human Legalities.” In Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat (eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Law and Society (Wiley Press), pp. 307-321., SUNY Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2016-022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2776185

Irus Braverman (Contact Author)

University at Buffalo Law School ( email )

School of Law
528 O'Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
United States
716-645-3030 (Phone)
716-645-2064 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~irusb/

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