The Legal Rights of All Living Things: How Animal Law Can Extend the Environmental Movement's Quest for Legal Standing for Non-Human Animals

• Author: Stacey L. Gordon
• Pages: 211-241

211

Chapter 9:

The Legal Rights of All

Living Things: How Animal

Law Can Extend the

Environmental Movement’s

Quest for Legal Standing

for Non-Human Animals

Stacey L. Gordon

I. Standing Jurisprudence .......................................................................213

A. Injury ...........................................................................................214

B. Causation .....................................................................................219

C. Redressability ...............................................................................220

D. Prudential Standing and Citizen Suits ..........................................221

E. Informational and Procedural Standing ........................................223

F. Organizational Standing ...............................................................226

G. States as Plaintis .........................................................................228

II. Lessons for Animal Law ......................................................................229

A. Pleadings Matter: It’s in the Details ..............................................229

B. Extending the Holdings ...............................................................232

1. Aesthetic Injury .....................................................................232

2. Public Trust ........................................................................... 233

3. Risk .......................................................................................234

C. Citizen Suits .................................................................................235

III. Personhood ......................................................................................... 237

Conclusion ................................................................................................... 240

212 What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?

In 1971, Christopher D. Stone posed the question rst to his students

and then to a wider audience, “Should trees have sta nding?”1 Although

Stone’s question initially was meant only to engage the students in his

property law course, Justice William O. Dougla s brought the question into

the environmental law discourse when he cited Stone’s article in the dissent

in Sierra Club v. Morton:2

e critical question of “standi ng” would be simplied and also put neatly in

focus i f we fashioned a federal r ule that al lowed envi ronmental issues to be

litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate

object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and

where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concer n

for protecting nature’s ecologica l equilibrium should lead to the conferral of

standing upon environmenta l objects to sue for their own preservation.3

Stone wanted his students to consider changing societal values regarding

what was ownable, who could own things, and the rig hts and duties asso-

ciated with ownership— his point was that legal developments fuel shifts

in societa l consciousness and morality.4 When his students grew bored, he

asked them to ponder what the social consciousness would look like if nature

had rights.5

More than 40 years later, modern legal discourse still struggles with this

question, and now the related one that is particularly relevant here—what

would it look like if animals had rights?6 Animals are protected as part of the

environment by statutes like the Endangered Species Act (ESA)7 and Marine

Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).8 ey are a lso protected in their own

right by statutes like the Animal Welfare Act.9 Nevertheless, courts struggle

1. C D. S, S T H S  O E  L, M,

  E (25th anniversary ed. 1996).

2. Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 742 (1972).

3. Id. at 741-42 (1972) (citing Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing: Toward Legal Rights

for Natural Objects, 45 S. C. L. R. 450 (1971)).

4. S, supra note 1, at vii-viii.

5. Id. at viii.

6. ere is a debate among scholars and jurists regarding whether animals have rights. One of the key

points of Stone’s original article was that natural objects did not have standing, but should. Stone,

supra note 1. On the other side of the argument, the court in Cetacean Cmty. v. Bush simply stated

without discussion that animals have rights protected by federal and state laws, including criminal

statutes. 386 F.3d 1169, 1175 (9th Cir. 2004). Cass Sunstein also observed that federal animal welfare

statutes create “an incipient bill of rights for animals.” Cass R. Sunstein, Standing for Animals (With

Notes on Animal Rights), 47 UCLA L. R. 1333, 1334 (2000).

7. 16 U.S.C. §§1531-1544.

8. Id. §§1361-1423h.

9. 7 U.S.C. §§2131-2159.