The Geek In Review Ep. 60 – The AALL Animal Law Caucus: Acknowledging and Researching Animal Rights in a People-Centric World

We all love our pets and think of them as part of our families. Even though we might love them as much (or more) than we love people, the legal system does not allow them the same protection. That doesn’t mean that there are no rights for animals, in fact, there are many specific laws designated to protect them. In this episode of The Geek in Review, we bring on four experts in researching Animal Laws, not just in the US, but worldwide. We talk with the following members of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Animal Law Caucus:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Greg Lambert: You’ve seen this, right? The ASMR, where they do the whole thing while they’re whispering. And the idea is that it will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Okay. Actually, mine just went up.

[00:00:15] Marlene Gebauer: Mine did too. Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

[00:00:35] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. This week, we discuss animal laws and how a group of law librarians within the American Association of Law Libraries focuses their effort on improving access to and the ability to research those laws. We’ll be joined later by four members of the Animal Law Caucus and find out what they do both at the annual conference each year and what they do year-round. Marlene, I’m a big fan of their bringing in the therapy dog sessions at the conference each year.

[00:01:05] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, gosh, I wish they would just loan them out, you know, most of the time at work.

[00:01:10] Greg Lambert: Well, it’s been great to be back home and take some time off from all the traveling. But of course, you know, I’m knee deep within budget season here. So, you know, there is that.

[00:01:19] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, totally understand. I’ve been taking, you know, the last few days to just play a lot of catch up from being out of the office. So I’m feeling like I’m pretty much back on my feet again.

[00:01:32] Greg Lambert: Well, that makes one of us.

[00:01:33] Marlene Gebauer: Well, Greg, it’s time for this week’s Information Inspirations. Greg, it seems like inspirations are like work or Goldilocks. I don’t know. They’re either too many or not enough. Never just right.

[00:01:52] Greg Lambert: No.

[00:01:53] Marlene Gebauer: This week was a too many week and so it was really tough deciding.

[00:01:57] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I was looking through your list and glad you weeded out some of it.

[00:02:03] Marlene Gebauer: That was just the list. That wasn’t even all the other ones I thought I saved and haven’t even gotten back to. So first, I listened to Make Me Smart. This one was on investment opportunities with Native American tribes and specifically in tech. There’s a Wiring the Rez conference next year and part of the discussion will be around education of investors on the benefits of investing in tech initiatives on native lands. Kai and Molly had a native financial officer on the show to talk about it. So doing business under tribal law is not the same thing as doing business in a commercial setting or even with the US government.

[00:02:41] Greg Lambert: No, it is not.

[00:02:42] Marlene Gebauer: It is not. Since the tribes operate under the doctrine of self- determination, they have to waive some limited sovereignty for economic enterprise. Underwriting is different as the tribal government has to be leveraged. So the hope is that this conference will draw investors who are curious to explore the opportunities that are there. And apparently, there really are opportunities. So things like remote data centers to deal with sensitive information and tribal developed telecom firms to install Wi-Fi. sensitive information, and tribal developed telecom firms to install Wi Fi. It was really an interesting story about an area where I dare say many of us really don’t know too much about.

[00:03:23] Greg Lambert: Yeah, I agree. I listened to the same interview. And it was fascinating, just the fact that there’s a, you know, a chief financial officer for the reservation. So something I, you know, makes sense, but I wouldn’t have thought of.

[00:03:36] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly.

[00:03:37] Greg Lambert: So Marlene, I know you saw this thread on Twitter talking about Texas Judge Alan Albright out of Waco, Texas, who has a rule within his court that if a brief is over 10 pages long, that he requests that the brief also be recorded, so he can listen to it, rather than just reading it. From what I’ve gathered, Judge Albright travels a lot between Austin and Waco, which is not a short drive, by the way. And he uses that time to listen to the briefs. Who knows, maybe he’ll take the time to listen to the Geek & Review while he’s on the road.

[00:04:14] Marlene Gebauer: Well, Judge Albright, if you’re listening, and you have any interest in people recording, I know me and a number of other people are very interested in doing it. So, you know, give me a call.

[00:04:27] Greg Lambert: Yeah. Now, the fun thing about Twitter is that people have a little fun with this idea of recording briefs. And they had a number of suggestions for celebrity voices to do those recordings. I talked with an attorney who has been in front of Judge Albright, and they said that they have not recorded their brief so far, turning in the briefs in the quote, traditional manner. However, they are now seriously thinking of doing the vocal recording, if there’s a chance that it might give them a slight advantage in the process. So perhaps this is an idea that many other judges might adopt in this era of podcast and trying to make the best of your time you spend traveling between home and work.

[00:05:10] Marlene Gebauer: See, I’m telling you, I’m telling you, there is opportunity here.

[00:05:15] Greg Lambert: So my second inspiration is not a new article, but it is one that I just found through a friend who works at a nonprofit social justice organization. And it aligns well with our previous interview with Andy Kramer and Al Harris about workplace environments. So if you haven’t listened to that one, please do it’s really good. In the article, it’s called The Social Justice Sector Has a Racism Problem. Author is Bit Menjivar, and I hope I said that right, writes about her experiences within an organization where she thought she would have allies. And it turned out that the unconscious bias that plagues other organizations are just as present in these types of organizations, whose very existence is to fight these biases. So Menjivar, who is black with a Latinx accent, tells her story of how assumptions that are made based on her appearance and speech, and that people are not willing to talk with those who they find different, relying upon the old, you know, they are intimidating, or, you know, she’s just an angry black woman stereotype. I think the same type of attitude is something that happens within law firms as well. Even those who are well-meaning. Menjivar says it best when describing how bad it is for the organization. She says, when an organization fails to attract, empower, and retain the leadership of black women, everyone loses. Many white dominant systems, does that sound familiar, of charity and international development have been failing, despite massive investments, to significantly reduce poverty and advance justice in communities of color.

[00:06:48] Marlene Gebauer: Development have been failing despite massive investments to significantly reduce poverty and

[00:06:55] Greg Lambert: Perhaps being willing to listen to us and create more spaces for our voices to be heard and believed is a good place to start. So I say, well said.

[00:07:08] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, absolutely. And it actually ties in very nicely with my next inspiration. So how can we all be smart about algorithmic bias? Well, first, listen to this podcast, and then read the article in the show notes. The authors start out with a couple of real-time examples on algorithmic bias. One was a gender-biased credit offer from Apple Card where men got higher limits than the women did.

[00:07:36] Greg Lambert: Oh my God, I saw that.

[00:07:36] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, yeah, right?

[00:07:39] Greg Lambert: And it included like Wozniak’s wife.

[00:07:44] Marlene Gebauer: Whoops. Whoops. And the second was a Chinese surveillance company called Hikivision that got caught marketing the ability to classify faces based on race and ethnicity.

[00:07:58] Greg Lambert: Yeah, that sounds bad.

[00:08:00] Marlene Gebauer: It does sound bad, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. So first, we have to look at the different kinds of discrimination, direct, indirect, and spurious. I like saying spurious. It’s just a fun word to say. It is. It is. It is. So direct discrimination is when individuals receive less favorable treatments on the basis of a protected attribute. So not being able to vote because you’re a woman is an example of that. Indirect discrimination occurs when treatment is based on factors that are somewhat related with, but not the same as, a protected attribute. Denying financial services based on location where certain races or ethnicities make up the majority of the population would be an example of that. Spurious discrimination is not discrimination, but rather a statistical bias that looks like discrimination. So if more men are accepted into a program than women, that looks like discrimination. But if the requirement was that a STEM education was needed and less women applicants had a STEM education and there were no other forms of direct or indirect discrimination, it’s not technically discrimination. and less women applicants had a STEM education and there were no other forms of direct or

[00:09:18] Greg Lambert: Okay, technically.

[00:09:19] Marlene Gebauer: Technically. No, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. We’re getting there. Just hang on. Hang on. Hang on.

[00:09:25] Greg Lambert: So I want to jump in. So from there, the authors know that discrimination can be automated into a system, which we know already.

[00:09:31] Marlene Gebauer: If the humans that input engage in discriminatory practice, then they train the system that way. But the really interesting part is that the authors say it’s very hard to determine true discrimination from spurious discrimination, even if it isn’t a black box system. Both show up as statistical bias. So what do you do?

[00:09:55] Greg Lambert: I don’t know. What do you do?

[00:09:58] Marlene Gebauer: Well, it seems like you need a causal model that uses mediation analysis to question the system. So for example, the algorithm gave him a $5,000 credit line. What would it give him as a woman? So apparently, I mean, that’s the type of question that would be asked of the system to see if in fact it’s operating in a biased fashion. Right. Now, apparently this isn’t foolproof either, but I guess it’s a step in the right direction. And the authors also dive into this debatable argument that discrimination doesn’t equal malicious intent, at least in computers, which I get, but garbage in, garbage out, or even more garbage out in some cases, the impact at the end, as they note, can be the same regardless of intent. So I don’t think, you know, we can hide behind this, it was an intentional argument. As, you know, we roll this kind of stuff out.

[00:11:00] Greg Lambert: Yeah. That would be a large cover to be behind if you can just say, well, it wasn’t our intent. Yeah. Of course it wasn’t.

[00:11:09] Marlene Gebauer: Everybody will say that, right?

[00:11:11] Greg Lambert: Yeah. But, you know, bias in, bias out. Well, that was good. And that wraps up this week’s Information Inspirations. Every week we ask for people to call in or tweet us or email us to make suggestions for topics for the show. And we do listen to those suggestions, and it is the reason that we are interviewing our guests this week. Now, Marlene, I do have to make a bit of a disclaimer on this one, as it was my sister-in-law who reached out to make the suggestion of interviewing the members of the AALL Animal Law Caucus.

[00:11:45] Marlene Gebauer: She is one of our biggest fans.

[00:11:47] Greg Lambert: She is, though. However, we still encourage others to reach out to us who may or may not be related.

[00:11:53] Marlene Gebauer: That’s absolutely true. I mean, because oftentimes I’ll get people saying, you know, how do you choose the different topics that you talk about? And oftentimes, you know, we do get suggestions from people. So please reach out if there’s something that you want to hear, and we’ll be happy to speak with you.

[00:12:12] Greg Lambert: Yeah, that’s a very common question I get as well. So again, if you have an idea, let us know. It leads to great topics that we might not otherwise choose. So enough with that. Let’s jump into our conversation on what’s going on with animal rights and how AALL’s caucus on this topic is helping us better research those issues.

[00:12:35] Greg Lambert: We’d like to welcome members of the AALL Animal Law Caucus. Alex Jung is the Library Director and Professor of Practice at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Stacey Gordon-Sterling is the Law Library Director and Professor of Law at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. Katie Ott is Reference Librarian at Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford University. Sarah Slinger is the Reference Librarian and Lecturer at Law.

[00:13:12] Alex Jung: at the University of Miami Law Library.

[00:13:16] Greg Lambert: It looks like we’ve got the country covered. Alex, I’d like to ask you, what is the mission of the Animal Law Caucus?

[00:13:22] Alex Jung: Yes. So the Animal Law Caucus was actually founded back in 2010. So we’re actually going to celebrate our 10-year anniversary next year in New Orleans at the annual conference of the American Animal Law Conference. The American Association of Law Libraries. Congratulations. Thank you. We’re really excited about that. And so far, we have about 100 members from over 30 states in the United States. And our mission has always been to support the efforts of law librarians, academics, practitioners in their research, teaching, scholarship, and practice of animal law.

[00:14:01] Greg Lambert: I know this may sound a bit simplistic, but I’m going to go ahead and ask it anyway. Can you define what you mean by animal laws and what specific traits these laws have that are of interest to your caucus?

[00:14:15] Alex Jung: For us, I think any laws that have an impact on non-human beings would be interesting to us. would be interesting to us. And so that would involve laws governing farm animals, wildlife animals, service animals, as well as laws and regulations that address human and animal interactions, such as regulations on animal uses in the research and experiment, therapy, emotional support animals, and food productions. And jurisdiction-wise, we’re interested in all jurisdictions from domestic to foreign jurisdictions, as well as international jurisdictions. So pretty much all laws related to animal rights and welfare.

[00:15:00] Greg Lambert: Stacey, let me ask you, what is it of the caucus that got you interested in joining?

[00:15:07] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: I was actually part of the group that founded the caucus back in 2010. I didn’t realize it had been 10 years.

[00:15:14] Greg Lambert: It doesn’t take long.

[00:15:15] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: No, it doesn’t. That goes by fast. So the group actually started kind of before me with just a group of people at AALL that used to go out and find a vegan restaurant to have dinner at during the caucus, and that’s kind of where it started. I was particularly interested in starting it because I teach animal law.

[00:15:38] Katie Ott: and all of my research and writing is in animal law,

[00:15:41] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: so it seemed like kind of a natural fit for the work I do. And plus, I just like to get together with people and talk about animal law. So, good place to do that.

[00:15:52] Greg Lambert: Well, I’ll just go around the horn. Katie, how about you?

[00:15:54] Katie Ott: So I really got interested in the Animal Law Caucus through working with Alex, and we’re actually writing a book together on animal law. We found that there was a really big gap in the current animal law literature. We have quite a bit of publications out there addressing specific topics within animal law, such as property and animals, constitutional law in animals, but we didn’t find anything that had been written on researching animal laws. So that’s where we kind of decided that we needed to fill that gap. So our book, Global Animal Law Research Strategies and Resources, we hope helps that situation.

[00:16:28] Greg Lambert: I’m going to have you put a pin in that because I’m going to have you fill in more details here. But I wanted to get last but not least, Sarah, what was it that piqued your interest about the animal law caucus?

[00:16:41] Sarah Slinger: So I’m actually pretty new to the caucus, new to the profession of law librarianship and new to the caucus consequently.

[00:16:47] Greg Lambert: You’re welcome.

[00:16:49] Sarah Slinger: Thank you. But I was a fellow at the University of Arizona and I worked, Cynthia Condit was my supervisor who was immediate past president of the caucus. And I had done an animal law guide during my fellowship. And so she knew I was very interested in animals. And she let me know about the animal law caucus and kind of got me involved that way. I thought it was a good opportunity to get involved and to learn more also about animal laws, because as Katie just said, there was kind of a gap.

[00:17:19] Greg Lambert: So I’m going to circle back to the book now that Katie was mentioning. So Alex and Katie, you are co-writing the book. Walk us through what the book is covering, kind of what your interests were in writing it, and when we should expect to see it.

[00:17:33] Alex Jung: and when we should expect to see it.

[00:17:34] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, and who’s the audience?

[00:17:36] Alex Jung: So, just like Katie said, back in 2018, when I was still at Stanford, Katie and I started thinking about maybe writing or co-editing a book on animal law research. And it turns out that we have a group, almost all reference librarians at Stanford Law Library are animal lovers. So when we started talking about this idea with the other librarians, that they’re all excited. So that really motivates us to submit a book proposal to the Carolina Academic Press. We did a little bit of research about the potential audience in the market. We noticed that there are quite a lot of really good works on substantive animal laws, but there’s no in-depth treatment. on how to do animal law research, either in the US or globally. There are some really good research guides we find. For example, Harvard Animal Law Center has a really good research guide. UCLA and Georgetown both have a really good research guide, but there’s just not one like in-depth treatment. So we decided that we want to cover specific animal law topics, but we want to focus on the research resources and strategies. So once our book proposal was accepted by the Carolina Academic Press, we did a call for author, a call for book chapters. We picked 14 topics that across US, international, and foreign jurisdictions. And then the topics are really covers a lot of different kind of areas. For example, we have a chapter on researching protection of animals in the areas of armed conflict. We’re going to have a chapter on international trade and animal rights. For the US, we’re going to have a chapter on factory and free speech issues with agriculture gag litigation, wildlife protection issues in the United States. And we also have librarians writing about how to do animal law research in foreign countries such as China, Korea, Africa, Iceland, and Australia. Right now, the plan is that we’re hoping the book will be on the market in 2021.

[00:19:53] Greg Lambert: Well, that piqued my interest with the animal rights in war zones. I would have not thought about that. Katie, how did you come about on these topics? How did you decide what it was you were going to cover in this book?

[00:20:09] Katie Ott: Well, so a lot of it stems from personal interest. One chapter that I’m really excited about is the chapter on equine animal cruelty. And that’s because I ride horses. And so it’s something that I’ve certainly kept in the back of my mind. And I’ve always thought I would be interested in researching why it’s still happening. And we’re looking specifically at in this chapter in the soaring, which is the process of, it’s awful, but it’s the process of putting caustic chemicals on horses’ hooves, and it makes them pick their feet up higher. And it’s actually relatively common in the Tennessee walking horse show rings. And I used to have a Tennessee walking horse, so I saw it happen quite often. And so it’s just interesting, there’s been quite a bit of failed legislation that attempts to provide more protection for the horses. And it’s even gained bipartisan support. So understanding why these bills fail, especially for a researcher who doesn’t have the background knowledge of the Tennessee walking horse industry can be incredibly difficult. So I’m excited about the fact that the book can kind of offer a roadmap to some of the more nuanced and specific areas of animal law, such as equine cruelty issues. But I also am really excited that, you know, even though the chapters can be really specific, the tactics in the book can also be applied to animal law more broadly. And I mean, that’s largely because many of the research difficulties within animal law are so common to the different facets of the field. You’ve got lobbying and interest groups making arguments behind the scenes. You’re weaving out of a lot of different legal fields, such as property law and con law. And then you also have the industry-specific knowledge that’s important to know during your research process.

[00:21:40] Greg Lambert: I went to high school in Mississippi. And one of the ways that I was a band nerd, the way that we actually raised funding for the year was through a horse show, which featured the Tennessee walking horses. And now, and yeah, now I feel bad.

[00:21:58] Katie Ott: Well, it’s not every horse that it happens to, but it’s really big in Tennessee, unfortunately.

[00:22:06] Marlene Gebauer: I want to jump in for a second because, you’re touching upon some examples and I want to dig a little deeper into that. So, under most state and federal laws, animals are regarded as property with no legal rights of their own. And, as you’re mentioning, there’s the host of laws that pertain to animals. So, you know, the anti-cruelty one is probably one that most people will be familiar with. But, you know, things like international law regarding wildlife and poaching, nuisance laws. And literally, just this past week, I was in North Carolina, and I saw a news report about a turkey problem that they’re having in town, and the turkeys are overrunning the town and they’re struggling to figure out how to deal with it. You know, consumer protection law, puppy lemon laws, and I didn’t even know that was a thing, like false advertising and entertainment relating to zoos and aquariums. Does the caucus support education and advocacy in these types of areas, and how do you do that?

[00:23:15] Greg Lambert: Who wants to take it? Stacey?

[00:23:17] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Yeah, I can jump in. So we actually, yes, we do support all of that, education in those areas, a couple different ways. One is on our website, tracking legislation, federal legislation, and then some news stories. We also, of course, more indirectly, but support our library patrons, individually library patrons who are working in those areas. And some of us also individually do work on legislation and things like that, or on our own scholarships. So there’s kind of a whole variety of different ways that the caucus is involved in supporting those efforts.

[00:23:58] Alex Jung: Yeah, we also have each year at the annual conference of WWL, we’ll have a program, educational programming, and we have been inviting practitioners, as well as scholars and professors, talking about different types of animal welfare and animal rights issues. And Stacey is actually the chair of the educational programming committee, so the committee is really doing excellent work on that.

[00:24:24] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: I should have remembered to talk about that since I’m the chair. Well, go right ahead. We actually do, every year, try and think of, based mostly on location, on who would be good speakers, either practitioners or scholars in the area. Last year, we had a panel of representatives from some of the animal welfare nonprofits because we were in DC, which is where they all have offices. depend on where we are. Sometimes it’s topic-related. Sometimes it’s more topical to the location. Sometimes we just get an idea of something that we want to cover.

[00:25:00] Marlene Gebauer: Well, I think that’s great because, literally, I was doing a little bit of background research for the interview today. And again, like I mentioned, it’s like some of these things, I didn’t, you know, once you see it, you’re like, oh, of course, but I didn’t really make the connection because it just wasn’t specifically dealing with animals, but there’s really quite a large amount of law that’s out there that does. And one of the things that I found interesting is that some states have laws on the books that actually do treat animals more like people in terms of rights.

[00:25:36] Greg Lambert: And Illinois was an example that I saw.

[00:25:39] Marlene Gebauer: In divorces, they take the well-being of the pet into account when determining which parent, if you will, gets custody. Are you aware of any other examples like this?

[00:25:53] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Alaska has a law like that. And the other kind of thing I could think of is, I think it’s Pennsylvania that allows law students actually to serve kind of as guardian ad litem or court advocates for animals.

[00:26:09] Marlene Gebauer: That’s interesting. So how would that, I mean, would that work in terms of like inheritance or?

[00:26:16] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: I suspect it’s mostly in like dissolution cases, but I could see it also working in like an animal cruelty case, something like that.

[00:26:25] Marlene Gebauer: Okay.

[00:26:26] Greg Lambert: Now I want to go back to the AALL conference and talk about something that you offer outside the educational offerings. Actually, the reason that I got the idea to bring you guys on was my sister-in-law, who is not a librarian, she’s actually a science teacher in Colorado, but has a master’s degree, I believe, in zoology. and has a number of animals that she takes care of.

[00:26:54] Marlene Gebauer: I hope that’s what it is because you’re going to get in so much trouble if you got her degree wrong.

[00:26:58] Greg Lambert: Probably. It won’t be the first or last time. And one of the things that you guys do bring along is the therapy animals, and it’s a very popular event that you do by bringing in the therapies, and you talk about therapy animals in the educational and work environment. So what’s the motivation there, and what are you seeing as far as using therapy animals in education and in workplaces? Sarah, do you want to take that one?

[00:27:28] Sarah Slinger: Well, I mean, from my own personal experience, just working in different academic law libraries, we always bring in therapy animals during finals time, and I think it’s done wonders for the students, honestly. I mean, we usually have, every place I’ve been, we’ve had lines out the door to pet these animals during finals, and I think there are scientific studies that show that it does help decrease stress, and especially when working a lot of high- strung law students, they really appreciate, I think, having these therapy animals at their disposal during a really stressful time in their life. And I mean, I guess I could hand it back to Alex to talk about the motivation to why they do this at the annual conference.

[00:28:12] Alex Jung: I think bringing therapy dogs to academic law libraries can really trace back to, I believe, Yale Law Library is the first one who did that in 2011. And the primary purpose is, as what Sarah just said, it’s really helpful, it’s kind of a stress reliever for law students, but it’s also kind of helped to bring students to the library more. And that are actually the two main reasons that we’re trying to do at WWL Conference. First, you know, the conference can be stressful, too, so we’re trying to bring therapy dogs to the conference to help our conference attendees, and also, as I was observing and participating in those events, I noticed that it’s also a really good thing in terms of bringing conference attendees to hang out with animals and also hang out with their colleagues. It’s a good social event, in my opinion, and those are the main reasons that we decided to bring therapy dogs to the conference. I think we started a few years ago.

[00:29:15] Marlene Gebauer: Well, I can certainly say that I wish that they had therapy dogs when I was in school taking final exams. That would have been a big help.

[00:29:25] Greg Lambert: What is the difference between a therapy animal and what we see a lot of with comfort animals? And I can tell you this, Marlene, I actually had a guy in my law school that brought his comfort chihuahua to school with him. So all right, Stacey, go ahead.

[00:29:45] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: And actually, this was part of one of our programs once we did, the first year we had therapy animals, our program was on service animals and therapy animals and all the differences. Generally, comfort animals or emotional assistance animals are basically pets that somebody that has a need for that kind of just emotional support. They have, and they are under some laws allowed to bring them in, and some like university policies allowed to bring them into places. Therapy animals usually belong to a person, and they’re also pets, but they tend to go more on a volunteer basis into institutions.

[00:30:30] Marlene Gebauer: You know, into what? Hospitals and things like that.

[00:30:31] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Hospital facilities, assisted living facility schools. That’s another one now, like elementary schools where they’re using them for kids who have reading trouble. They’ll read to a dog where they’re intimidated to read to a person. So they’re actually really pets too that belong not to the people who are being helped necessarily, but to somebody who voluntarily brings them into those areas. Courts now are using, starting to use therapy animals, especially when working with kids. And the first year we did the therapy dogs, the dogs actually were courthouse dogs that were owned by, one was a prosecutor and one, somebody else who worked in the court and they brought their dogs to work every day.

[00:31:19] Greg Lambert: Do the therapy animals, do they have to have any type of training or what is it that sets them apart?

[00:31:27] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Therapy animals usually are trained. There’s a couple of different organizations that will test therapy animals and usually it’s things like being good with all sorts of people. Therapy animals that go into medical facilities are often trained not to be freaked out by medical equipment and things like that. So it’s often temperament, but they are, they have to be, well trained not to bark and growl and things like that as well, have good manners.

[00:31:58] Greg Lambert: Yeah, so my mom’s old Pomeranian wouldn’t have, would have made the cut. I’m telling you.

[00:32:03] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Yeah, my hound, no.

[00:32:06] Marlene Gebauer: So it’s different than say, you know, a dog who’s been trained like a, you know, a seeing eye dog or something like that. They have special, they have special training on top of that.

[00:32:17] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Exactly, yes. Service animals are a whole other category and they are also, they’re trained to do specific tasks to help somebody with a disability.

[00:32:25] Greg Lambert: It was interesting that you mentioned about the reading to dogs, because I just read, in fact, I don’t know why I didn’t think about that for this interview, but just read this morning coming into work about how a rescue center is having some of the elementary kids come in and actually read to the pets that are at the facility. And it’s helping both the kids and the animals. Yeah.

[00:32:51] Marlene Gebauer: Now the U.S. doesn’t seem to rank as, as highly compared to other countries in terms of animal rights. The UK, Germany, and India actually rank higher according to some surveys. Now, recently the House of Representatives passed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act or PACT that will make it a federal crime to abuse animals. Right now, federal law only prevents animal fighting and making and distributing videos depicting animal cruelty. Do you see a trend toward having more federal protections? And what does that mean for, for humans and our, our, our infrastructure?

[00:33:34] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: I can address that too. I feel like I’m talking too much.

[00:33:38] Greg Lambert: That’s all right, Stacey. Go ahead.

[00:33:39] Marlene Gebauer: Everybody has the opportunity.

[00:33:41] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: Um, no, I don’t see a trend in federal laws, in federal protections. I wish, but I don’t. And part of that is because of probably a, well, one, the political system, but two, the difficulty of enforcement on the federal level. The Animal Welfare Act is a good example where even now there are not a lot of Animal Welfare Act people who can enforce the Animal Welfare Act. So a lot gets passed up under that. It’s more state laws, for sure. I think a lot is happening on the more on the state level, both in the legislatures and in the courts. And I think that’s where, and even on the local level, things like cities and towns banning circus animals or passing ordinances so that pet stores can’t sell animals from puppy mills and things like that. So I see a lot happening more on the local level. Um, but I also think that kind of more on the public level, that people’s attitudes about the status of animals are changing. And I think that is what is being kind of manifest more around the world, or that people are recognizing, one, that animals are sentient beings, but two, that they either have rights or at least some sort of welfare interests that are playing out in international law. And I think that will eventually play out in the US. And I think the question about what impact that will have on human infrastructure, I think that’s a really interesting question, partly because some of the, well, I do some work with animal welfare in the Montana legislature, and some of the pushback on the laws are fear of giving animals too many rights that will impact people. I actually, I was talking with somebody once who does animal rescue in Palestine, where it’s very difficult to do animal rescue and one of the things he mentioned was it’s very hard to talk about animal welfare, where the people don’t even have welfare and rights. But I started to think about that and think about, well, we often think, okay, well, once people are in a better position and we have more human rights, then we can turn to animal rights, but I almost think that it’s not an either or, that one doesn’t have to come first. I think that the instilling of kindness and compassion and that all sentient beings have these interests translates across and that we don’t have to wait, we can start being good to animals and that will also just instill that kind of more compassion that’ll improve the lives of people too.

[00:36:26] Marlene Gebauer: I certainly agree with you and I hope so.

[00:36:28] Greg Lambert: Yeah, and an example of that, Alex, I’m not sure if you or maybe Katie, if you saw the story of the, was it Sandra the orangutan who is granted legal personhood by a judge in Argentina and has now been moved to Central Florida where she is living out the rest of her life, I think, in a nice environment. And so I think you see things like this, Stacey had mentioned earlier, that people are afraid that if you start granting animals the rights, basically, that humans may get, that somehow or another that makes our rights somewhat less, I guess. Alex, are you hearing any other issues about trying to equate animals, basically giving them specific rights, whether it’s personhood as in Argentina or the rights of a human?

[00:37:28] Alex Jung: That’s a really good example, like, because in Argentina, they granted personhood to Sandra on the basis that Sandra has sufficient cognitive abilities that are similar or close to humans. But meanwhile, in the state of New York, there’s actually a case where the court refused to grant a legal person status, but that was actually based on the social obligations that the monkey does not have a social ability to do the social obligations. So, and I think that really goes back to, it’s a different type of rationale, and that may explain a little bit why U.S. has not been ranked as high as we hoped compared to some other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America, yeah.

[00:38:17] Greg Lambert: What country do you think has the highest rights given to animals and what would be some examples?

[00:38:26] Alex Jung: There’s actually, I was reading, there is actually a non-profit organization who did a ranking, I could not recall which country.

[00:38:33] Sarah Slinger: World Animal Protection, yeah, they do a ranking.

[00:38:37] Alex Jung: My impression is that a lot of European countries actually has a higher rank. It may have something to do with the more active efforts in European Union and Council of Europe. And then, as a member of a country of the European Union, that country automatically has some obligations to make sure their laws are complying with the European Union obligations.

[00:38:59] Marlene Gebauer: But I’m sorry, Sarah, you were going to add?

[00:39:02] Sarah Slinger: I would agree with that. It seems to be mostly European countries that are ranked very, very highly. One thing that, I mean, we kind of touched on it, but I think using animals and scientific research, I know that some of the top countries in that World Animal Protection ranking is because of greater protection for animals that are used in research. That’s something that we obviously don’t do a great job of here. I don’t know if anyone recalls, but just, I think it was earlier this year, there was a whole hubbub over these beagles. There was a group of beagles that, it was reported on the Humane Society, but it was in the Washington Post, it was all over the place. Because there was a group of beagles that they were testing, they were doing chemical testing on them for use. And I don’t remember the product. I know the company was Dow. They were doing chemical testing on these beagles and would not release them. And they were planning on killing the beagles after the study was over. Of course, people got wind of this. Humane Society got wind of this. And there was a petition that circulated that just got thousands and thousands and thousands of signatures. And I believe they did eventually release them. But this is, I mean, this is current news. This is still happening.

[00:40:14] Greg Lambert: Scary. Well, I’m a little surprised because I remember when I was a kid how there was a big uproar about animal testing and cosmetics. So I’m a little surprised that it’s still going on, but you’re saying it is still going on, right?

[00:40:28] Sarah Slinger: It is, yeah. I think they were doing the testing here, but they were doing it for a product that was to be marketed, I think, in Brazil. So they were trying to comply with Brazilian standards, but they were doing the testing here in the United States.

[00:40:40] Marlene Gebauer: Seems that there’s a lot more work to do in this area across the board.

[00:40:45] Greg Lambert: Yes, there is.

[00:40:46] Sarah Slinger: There’s an argument over. the welfare of the animals versus, if we don’t test on animals, how do we know it’s safe for humans and whether there are adequate alternatives? So, I mean, there’s this debate is continuing, as you said.

[00:41:00] Greg Lambert: Well, before we go, I wanted to circle back to the little anecdote that Marlene had mentioned about North Carolina with the turkeys overrunning the town. mentioned about North Carolina with the turkeys overrunning the town. I think it was probably just to get back at us for Thanksgiving. So speaking of those turkeys, do you think that the president will pardon the turkey again this year?

[00:41:19] Marlene Gebauer: I hope so.

[00:41:22] Sarah Slinger: He’s very into pardons, so.

[00:41:24] Greg Lambert: That’s true. That’s true.

[00:41:26] Stacey Gordon-Sterling: It’s a long-standing tradition.

[00:41:29] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, don’t be a turkey. Pardon the turkey.

[00:41:32] Greg Lambert: Pardon the turkey.

[00:41:33] Marlene Gebauer: They’re already pardoned at my house.

[00:41:36] Greg Lambert: Well, this has been very enlightening and very entertaining and somewhat a little scary on some of the things that are still going on. But I’d like to thank some members of the Animal Law Caucus, including Alex Jung, Stacey Gordon-Sterling, Katie Ott, and Sarah Slinger. Thank you all for joining us. It’s been great.

[00:41:58] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, thank you. This has been extremely enlightening. Thank you.

[00:42:05] Greg Lambert: It was great having Alex, Sarah, Stacey and Katie join us to talk about the caucus’s work and to give us an insider’s look on animal rights and laws across the globe. Very cool.

[00:42:17] Marlene Gebauer: I honestly did not consider all the areas of law where animals are impacted. So this was a great primer for me. And it was really enlightening to hear about how the caucus informs on and supports animal rights.

[00:42:33] Greg Lambert: Yeah. And I was surprised at some of the stuff that’s still going on, like the cosmetics testing. I remember when I was a kid and I thought that would get outlawed. So you always learn something.

[00:42:46] Marlene Gebauer: You still have to look at the labels.

[00:42:47] Greg Lambert: That’s true. That’s true. So once again, thanks to the members of the AALL Animal Law Caucus for joining us.

[00:42:55] Marlene Gebauer: And before we go, we want to remind listeners to take the time to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Rate and review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach out to us on Twitter at at GabeBauerM or at Glambert, or you can call the geek and review hotline at 713-487-7270 or email us at geekandreviewpodcast at gmail.com. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSicca. Thanks, Jerry.

[00:43:30] Greg Lambert: Yeah, thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later.

[00:43:33] Marlene Gebauer: Okay, see you, Greg. Hey, don’t take me away. I could walk on by the North Star, but I fail to notice that it’s still day and night. Till the devil’s back on the bar, the devil’s back on the bar, and the devil’s back on the bar.