Animals as Something More Than Mere Property: Interweaving Green Criminology and Law

Abstract

Our article argues that non-human animals deserve to be treated as something more than property to be abused, exploited, or expended. Such an examination lies at the heart of green criminology and law—an intersection of which we consider more thoroughly. Drawing upon our respective and collective works, we endeavor to engage in a discussion that highlights the significance of green criminology for law and suggests how law can provide opportunities to further green criminological inquiry. How the law is acutely relevant for constituting the animal goes hand in glove with how humanness and animality are embedded deeply in the construction of law and society. We contend that, when paired together, green criminology and law have the potential to reconstitute the animal as something more than mere property within law, shed light on the anthropocentric logics at play within the criminal justice system, and promote positive changes to animal cruelty legislation. Scholarship could benefit greatly from moving into new lines of inquiry that emphasize “more-than-human legalities”. Such inquiry has the power to promote the advocacy-oriented scholarship of animal rights and species justice.

Green Criminology–Law Interdisciplinarity Towards Multispecies Justice: The Case of Wildlife Trafficking in Vietnam

“…Foregrounding legal protection for non-human species suggests great potential for green criminology-law interdisciplinarity. Clearly, green criminology and the law can work together to address the injustices experienced by non-human species and examine practices that entail harm but are currently legal (Gacek and Jochelson 2020). Green criminology has the tools to expose law's anthropocentrism, to critique and to offer alternative perspectives, such as is implicit in NhRP's advocacy.…”

“…Law responds to social change and thus has the capacity to accommodate progressive reform (Gacek and Jochelson 2020). Green criminology can inform law on matters of non-human species justice by interrogating and making environmental harm and harm to non-human animals visible within the legal sphere.…”

“…Green criminology can inform law on matters of non-human species justice by interrogating and making environmental harm and harm to non-human animals visible within the legal sphere. It can call for the law to take more notice of the interests of non-human species in their own right (Gacek and Jochelson 2020). The NhRP is deploying the tools of black letter law in a 'green' context.…”

“…The intersections between green criminology and legal scholarship contain possibilities of expanding social understandings of human-animal relationships and broadening discussions relating to MSJ. Finally, a green criminology perspective can elucidate the socio-political and anthropocentric orientations of the justice system to galvanise reform (Gacek and Jochelson 2020).…”

Critiquing the Conception of “Crimes Against Nature”: The Necessity for a New “Natural” Law

“…Instead of occupying the position of co-conspirator, animals were cast as victims, sexless, penetrated, and devoid of desire (Rosenberg, 2017, p. 482). Animal rights advocates have called for laws to protect animals from bestiality, not because of the harms to humans or property which might result, but rather for the sake of the animals themselves (see also Gacek & Jochelson, 2020). Within an animal rights conception, a diverse range of human-animal sexual contact is fit into one particular narrative in which human-animal sex is always exploitative and if not contained, forms a “vortex of perverse and violent behavior” (Rosenberg, 2017, p. 483; see also Rudy, 2012, p. 607).…”