Conclusion

• Library: Pet Law & Custody: Establishing a Worthy & Equitable Jurisprudence for the Evolving Family (ABA) (2017 Ed.)

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

—David Copperfield

THE HEROIC JOURNEY

A true hero's journey involves taking a great risk. A hero may emerge through the recognition that the popular beliefs are not equivalent to truth. A hero is the person who stands up in front of a moving tank or the student who enters a segregated school. On a hero's journey, the individual risks falling into the abyss and struggles with how to navigate through complex problems without simple answers.

As difficult as the heroic journey is, the context of the quest may be to acquire knowledge or achieve a goal. In animal welfare, the valiant include Jane Goodall, Bernard Rollin, and Temple Grandin because they have shifted the foundation of popular beliefs. Jane informed us that chimpanzees are individuals who deserve names, not numbers. She also helped us understand their social systems. Bernard, both resolute and tenacious, took on the research industry. He was able to change what was acceptable in research practices through his singular role in the passage of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Recruited by Bernard at Colorado State University, Temple changed agricultural practices through her ability to articulate to ranchers and corporate executives alike that it was time to stop talking abstractly about pain and suffering. It was time to stop it. Her words were uniquely impactful because she, as an autistic person, related to and could explain the animal perspective like none before her.

Rule of Law

The rule of law has been glorified as it protects us against tyranny and chaos. Many seek to export this high ideal. Before holding ourselves out as a moral beacon, it is worthwhile to undertake some soul searching. The rule of law today can be a mechanistic and simplistic application of economic principles used to achieve monetary goals and certainty, devoid of consideration of the social and moral context in which legal disputes arise.

Justification for how we normatively behave may reflect our allegiance to reason, logic, linear analysis, and rational decision-making processes without adequate consideration of greater principles. When guiding and higher order precepts are interjected, some perceive them as derogating the legal system.

Legal institutions have been built to justify how things are done and name their output as justice. Over time, we have relied on case law from other centuries, reverently utilizing terms such as precedent or stare decisis, locution that seems to embody the symbolic image of a star. We do not deserve a gold star when we sacrifice the innocent by ignoring the rightfulness or wrongfulness of our actions, then hide behind the shield of willful ignorance thereby distancing ourselves from the affairs of the heart. Helen Keller famously observed that "The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision." In the same figurative sense, one may have a heart but be unable to follow it.

Lawyers trained to solve problems based upon a belief system focused on commercial value may be uncomfortable with the complex and emotional characteristics that family law cases have long presented, let alone those arising with companion animals. Some lawyers only deal with legal problems on the surface and act almost as if their clients are not real; their work is somewhat rote. Other lawyers are unaware that what they imagine to be their own rational decision-making processes have an indivisible physiological-emotional component. But, lawyers ultimately know that their clients are in pain. Because of the way the legal system is designed, some of them will not get justice—the kind of justice that we want to believe in, the kind of justice that exclaims, "When there is a wrong, there is a remedy" or "justice for all." Lawyers are often burdened with the idea that in some fundamental way, the justice system will let them down. Morale needs to be re-infused into our legal system. We can quell our fears and aspire to new standards of excellence.

Science

Through genetic modification or pharmaceutical neuro enhancements, humans are arguably becoming transhuman, meaning part human and part not. Not only is augmented reality (AR) upon us, but human body parts can become a cell line, such as HeLa, and classified as property, too. We also know that there are more microbe cells within our own bodies than human cells.

At the same time that we are changing ourselves, and are perhaps startled to learn which aspect of ourselves is...