Irus Braverman (University at Buffalo Law School) has posted Animals (Routledge Handbook for Law and Society (forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Looking at the law through the lens of the nonhuman animal can open up fundamental questions that speak to the very meaning of being human, and also to the ethical and political concerns that emerge in the project of governing human and more-than-human life. By acknowledging the myriad ways of being in the world, more-than-human legalities can extend the advocacy-oriented scholarship on animal rights to highlight the larger question of how both animality and humanness are deeply embedded in various legal constructions, and, reciprocally, how law is acutely relevant in the construction of animals and other-than-human beings.
In this brief chapter, I briefly describe the traditional approaches in animal law of animal welfare and animal rights, and then go on to present a novel, ecologically oriented approach that does not reproduce the liberal category of the individual with rights advocated by animals rights scholars, nor the utilitarian discourse of the animal welfare movement.