ARLAN WEB SITE REVIEW (June 2002)

The Animal Rights Law Project
http://www.animal-law.org

By Bianka Atlas

This interesting web site is the home of the Animal Rights Law Project, an academic initiative of Professor Gary Francione and Adjunct Professor Anna Charlton, who teach at Rutgers University School of Law in the United States.

The web site contains a number of materials written by Francione and Charlton as well as by students in the course 'Animal Rights: Theory and Practice', which Francione and Charlton have been teaching at Rutgers for over a decade. The professors are rightly seen as pioneers because Rutgers was the first law school in the United States to include animal rights law as a component of the academic curriculum. Students obtain academic credit not only for conventional assessments, but also for work on actual cases involving animal rights issues.

The website contains information on legal and regulatory actions litigated by Francione and Charlton; on-line handbooks concerning housing issues involving companion animals and freedom of expression; a number of essays, commentaries and journal articles on animal rights and the law; information on books written by Francione and Charlton, and various laws and regulations relating to animals.

Some of the more stimulating commentaries and essays focus on such topics as cloning, animal rights in cyberspace, abortion and animal rights and sexism and animal rights.

An interesting feature of the site is the 'Media Coverage' page (click on 'Animal Rights and the Law' under the Table of Contents, scroll to bottom of screen then click on 'Media Coverage'). On this link you will find newspaper articles on topics including wild horses, animal sacrifice, students rights to object to dissection and vivisection as part of their course curriculum and animal experimentation.