A Critical Moral Dilemma Within Animal Law Impact Litigation

Authors

Kyla Dayton-Woods

First Page

1

Abstract

Animals, as legal clients, deserve the same rights as people when being represented by attorneys. There is no Model Rule of Professional Conduct to guide attorneys on how to ethically represent their animal clients. This gap in the law demonstrates an uncertainty in how lawyers are meant to fulfill their moral and legal obligations for their animal clients. Using the Nonhuman Rights Project’s representation of two elephant clients, Beulah and Karen, as a test, this Article proposes a Model Rule to fill the moral gap. If this proposed rule was incorporated into the Model Rules, Beulah and Karen’s attorneys may have ethically been required to use a different litigation strategy that may have been more successful, and could have changed Karen and Beulah’s lives.

Recommended Citation

Kyla Dayton-Woods, A Critical Moral Dilemma Within Animal Law Impact Litigation, 29 Animal L. Rev. 1 (2023).
Available at: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/alr/vol29/iss1/2