Professor David Cassuto has been at Pace Law School since 2003.  Prior to joining the Pace faculty, he practiced complex civil litigation in San Francisco and clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Miami, Florida.  Cassuto is also a former professor of English specializing in literature and the environment.  He has published and lectured widely on of legal and environmental issues, especially those relating to animals and ethics.  He is particularly interested in the ethics and implication of industrial farming.  Selected publications include:

Books:
Dripping Dry: Literature, Politics and Water in the Desert Southwest
Cold Running River: An Ecological Biography of the Pere Marquette River

Articles:
“Bred Meat: The Cultural Foundation of the Factory Farm” -  Duke Journal of Law & Contemporary Problems
“Crime War & Romanticism: Arthur Andersen and the Nature of Entity Guilt” – Virginia Journal of Social Policy & Law
“The Law of Words: Standing, Environment & Other Contested Terms,” – Harvard Environmental Law Review
 
Professor Cassuto holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, a PhD in English from Indiana University with a minor in Applied Ecology, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Wesleyan University.  He teaches in the areas of property, professional responsibility, animal law, water law, international comparative law, and legal and environmental theory. 

Our Interview with David Cassuto

1. Why did you become involved in animal law?
I had long been interested in the ethical issues arising from our interaction with other species but it was not until I came to Pace Law School in 2002, that I became aware of animal law as such.  A course had been offered at Pace for a number of years but the person who taught the course had moved.  So I jumped at the opportunity to teach the course and thereby immerse myself in the field.

2. What do you think are the main obstacles to obtaining legal rights for animals? 
Legal rights are such a broad category that I think one of the primary obstacles involves reaching some consensus among animal advocates as to just what we mean by legal rights.  I also think the public’s antipathy to animal rights often arises from a misguided notion that only humans have rights and that that restriction is only “natural.”  In fact, neither is true; addressing the rights issue is mostly a matter of expanding the umbrella of rights to encompass all those to whom we owe ethical duties.

3. One of your primary interests in animal law is the ethics of industrial (factory) farming. Why did you choose to focus on factory farming as opposed to other activities that demonstrate society’s mistreatment of animals? 
It wasn’t so much a choice for me as an ethical imperative.  Billions of animals are brutalized and killed each year by industrial farming.  It is a business dedicated to increasing the efficiency of torture and slaughter.  The fact that it flies under the public radar while enjoying a highly favourable regulatory environment is, to my mind, shameful. 

4. An article of yours entitled “Bred Meat: The Cultural Foundation of the Factory Farm” was recently published in the Duke Journal of Law & Contemporary Problems. Can you tell us about the main themes of that article? 
Factory farming is often discussed in terms of its environmental and social impacts. It receives far less attention for what those practices say about our evolving relationship with animals. This article speaks to the latter.

Though rife with practices that might otherwise invite governmental scrutiny, industrial agriculture operates in a regulatory environment that endorses and subsidizes its methods. Discussions of factory farming that focus on the treatment of animals can often segue into apologies for or against animal rights. This article takes a different tack, asking instead how and why the factory farm industry could grow ascendant in an era when the concept of a human-animal divide has become increasingly suspect.

These opposing trends present a complex social dilemma. Bred Meat argues (through, among other methods, a case study of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah) that the principle of humans as separate and distinct from animals is derived from and dependent on a fundamentally religious belief. A legal framework predicated on such a notion can exist only in tension with the Establishment Clause articulated in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Addressing the problems of factory farms - as well as other forms of animal exploitation - will involve unraveling a tightly woven cultural quilt. It will require eschewing the unworkable notion of a human-animal divide and constructing a legal rhetoric of the posthuman. The last part of Bred Meat represents an attempt to begin that process.

5. You have previously lectured widely on legal and environmental issues relating to animals and ethics. What do you see as the main areas of
(i)   contention; and
(ii)  co-operation
between the environmental and animal law movements?
Animal and environmental advocates share so much common ground that it consistently amazes me that they do not cooperate more.  Both groups care deeply about maintaining the health and viability of the biotic community and all believe that interaction with the nonhuman environment should be governed by ethical principles that acknowledge the inherent value of creatures other than us.  However, broadly speaking, animal advocates tend to attach more importance to the animals themselves while environmental advocates focus more on the habitat they inhabit.  There are also some basic lifestyle and ideological differences.  Animal folk often criticize environmentalists for what they perceive as a failure to comprehend that a meat-based diet and environmental values are incompatible.  Environmentalists, meanwhile, often show little patience for what they view as the narrowness of the animal advocates’ worldview and their inability to understand that by preserving habitat, far more good gets accomplished for the nonhuman world than by focusing on the plight of individual animals.  The issue of animal “rights” often divides the two communities as well.

Despite their differences, I strongly believe the environmental and animal advocates can and should work together on many areas of shared concern.  One need not agree on everything with one’s allies.  I consider myself a member of both camps and I have yet to meet a member of either with whom I agree on everything.  Diversity is strength.


6. Do you think animal lawyers should be familiarising themselves with the debate about livestock production and its links to climate change?   
Absolutely.  This is an excellent example of the synergy I was speaking of in #5.  Environmental lawyers may be focused more on climate change while animal lawyers focus on the billions of animals whose confinement is exacerbating climate change.  But both groups would like to see drastic reforms in livestock production methods.  Furthermore, the danger to animals – even those not imprisoned in factory farms – from climate change is clear and immediate.  To advocate for animals is also to advocate against climate change. 

7. Earlier this year, you served as a panellist on a New York City Bar Association forum entitled ‘The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act: Civil Rights as a Casualty in Anti Terrorism Rhetoric.’ Did you argue that civil rights (including the right to advocate for animals) had been impeded by the anti-terrorism debate? 
Very much so.  This is a law that chills all advocacy, not just advocacy for animals.  It imposes draconian penalties for protesting “animal-related enterprises” but never defines the term.  All businesses are animal-related in some capacity so anyone could theoretically be prosecuted under the act for protesting virtually anything.  Furthermore, linking peaceful protests against animal mistreatment with terrorism is rhetorically very powerful and very dangerous.  It is an abuse of both process and of language. 

8. Do you have any words of wisdom to share with Australia's budding animal lawyers?
I believe animal lawyers are involved in the most important civil rights struggle of our time.  Animal lawyers stand poised to make a profound difference in the world by helping alleviate the suffering of billions while also educating our fellow humans regarding our responsibilities to nonhumans.  If there’s better work out there, I’d like to know what it is.