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Animal Law

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Animal Law
ID #: 41703
Question 1.
a)Animals are property under the law and therefore they are unable to bring a suit in court for themselves if they are harmed. Standing requires: 1. The plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact 2. The injury is casually related to a known act 3. Redressability. In the case, Citizens to End Animal Suffering and Exploitation v. the New England Aquarium, the court held that the Marine Mammal Protection Act does not allow the requirement of standing to be satisfied in a suit brought by an animal. “The Link” refers to this oppression as being closely linked to slavery. Slaves were also considered to be the property of their owners and in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court held that descendants of slaves, whether free or slave, could not be citizens and therefore were not entitled to standing in a court.
b)The legal basis for denying Dred Scott and Kama standing is that they are both considered property without any rights or interests. Citizens to End Animal Suffering v. New England Aquarium, the court held that Article III does not bar standing for animals; the court said that it must look to the statute to determine if there is standing. The reasoning for the decisions in Kama and Dred Scott can be traced to the economic interest in the animal exploitation industries and also in the slave trade industry. People have an economic interest in any property that they own. The problem with the economic interest in animals, as it was in humans, is that it cannot be denied that animals are substantially different than most other personal property. In the 1835 case Fable v. Brown, the court stated concern for the fact that slaves were considered property but in many cases the law treated them as people such as when they are punished for crimes. There was an obvious difference between slaves as chattel and other chattel. This is also true for nonhuman animals. They are considered property but they are qualitatively different than

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