Representing Animals

Abstract

Among the foremost functions of a lawyer is to represent her clients – to speak on their behalf and to act in their stead. Representational relationships require lawyers to understand what their clients think, need, and desire and to faithfully advocate for them. But in representing others, lawyers engage in a range of translational and interpretive practices and make myriad evaluative judgments and decisions. These practices complicate the act of representation, raising important epistemological, political, and ethical challenges, especially in cases where the representative is not a member of the group on whose behalf she purports to speak. The act of representation, even when well-intentioned, risks mischaracterizing the individual being represented; it may also reproduce hierarchy and domination by situating the other as unable to speak for herself, as someone who must be spoken for. And yet there is no space outside of representation to retreat to. Representation is a central site of social struggle. Through the legal claiming of rights and power, representation, including legal representation, can be an indispensable and liberatory weapon against exclusion and oppression. Representation is thus simultaneously dangerous and necessary.

This Article addresses this confounding ethical dilemma in the hitherto unexplored case of nonhuman animals. Animals are increasingly represented in law, both directly as clients and indirectly as the beneficiaries of social movement lawyering. On the one hand, representing animals seems an impossible task, given the untranslatability of animals’ voices and the presumptuousness of speaking for them. On the other hand, our relentless exploitation of nonhumans demands representational interventions, including the legal representation of animal clients and the informal representation of animals’ interests though social movement lawyering. Despite the significant stakes of this dilemma, the ethics of animal legal representation are largely untheorized.

Working with theories of lawyer accountability, including the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct and critical approaches to cause lawyering, this Article offers a framework for taking responsibility for the thorny ethical issues that arise in representing nonhumans, who we cannot fully comprehend, yet whose voices cry out for justice.

Keywords: Animal Law, Jurisprudence, Representation, Social Movement Lawyering, Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility