Harvard Law School Debuts Program That Trains Students to Fight For Animal Rights

This week, Harvard Law School (HLS) announced the launch of a new program that will train its students to advocate for animals. The Animal Law & Policy Clinic will be part of HLS’ Animal Law & Policy Program (ALPP) and will focus on issues affecting farmed and captive animals, wildlife, climate-change related topics, worker exploitation in animal agriculture, and other topics with the goal of creating future leaders in the animal protection movement. “The Animal Law & Policy Clinic at HLS will train and prepare our graduates to embark on careers in the animal protection field, produce impactful litigation and policy analysis to benefit the animal protection movement, and provide an internationally renowned platform for educating the broader public about the many pressing issues involving animal law and policy,” ALPP Faculty Director Professor Kristen Stilt said. The new clinic will be led by Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor Katherine Meyer (who founded leading animal-protection law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks 26 years ago) and Clinical Instructor Nicole Negowetti (a nationally recognized food systems policy expert). “I am honored to help launch the Animal Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School,” Negowetti said. “The clinic will provide outstanding training for a new generation of advocates as we identify and pursue high-impact legal strategies to achieve a resilient, healthy, and just food system—for the benefit of human and non-human animals alike.” The clinic will give students a hands-on experience in litigation, legislation, administrative practice, and policymaking, both in the United States and internationally. “Animal law is a vitally important and rapidly growing field,” HLS Dean John F. Manning said. “Our new Animal Law & Policy Clinic will give students real-world experience in this burgeoning field, build on Harvard Law School’s long tradition of innovative pedagogy, and prepare future graduates to address significant societal challenges.” HLS is one of 167 law schools in the US that now offer an animal-law course—an increase from just nine schools that offered such courses in 2000.