Justin Marceau's book Beyond Cages: Animal Law and Criminal Punishment shines a light on three very serious problems in the U.S. animal protection movement brought on by its connections to the criminal justice system: (a) implicit racism baked into the race neutral or color-blind position the movement takes; (b) reliance on faulty “link” research used to justify harsher sentences for individuals who harm animals; and (c) having accepted in the 2000s, either explicitly or implicitly, the availability of tougher felony convictions in exchange for industry-wide agricultural exemptions for cruelty prosecutions involving food animals. Marceau argues that these positions have seriously compromised the animal protection movement's aspirations to be a civil rights and social justice movement. It is a mistake, he argues, to yoke a movement motivated by “progressive social reform” to the train of “regressive social policy” (p. 1), namely, the misguided “carceral logic” of the U.S. criminal justice system...
Beyond Cages: Animal Law and Criminal Punishment
angela fernandez is a full professor of law at the Faculty of Law and Department of History at the University of Toronto. She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, a member of the board of advisors and a director of Animal Justice Canada, as well as a member of the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network (with the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law, and Policy). Professor Fernandez has been the book review editor (Americas) for Law and History Review since 2017 and a contributing reviewer to the legal history section of The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) (JOTWELL) since 2011. Her books include Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Her research interests include history, law, animal law, and ethics. Email: angela.fernandez@utoronto.ca
Angela Fernandez; Beyond Cages: Animal Law and Criminal Punishment. Journal of Animal Ethics 1 April 2022; 12 (1): 114–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/21601267.12.1.16
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