Crime Victims' Rights: Critical Concepts for Animal Rights

Authors

Douglas E. Beloof, Lewis & Clark Law School

First Page

19

Abstract

It is simultaneously intimidating and presumptuous to make observations about a movement that one is not intimately involued in. I am not an animal rights scholar. However, I am in the dignity recognition business. As a legal advocate and academic, I work to promote the dignity of human victims of crime. I have written the only casebook for law students about crime victims law, consult with Congress about crime victim law, and advise attorneys and victim organizations around the country. I also lwt·e considerable expe­rience in taking movements and moving them into practical operations within prosecutors' offices; for example, in forming domestic violence units and multi-disciplinary child abuse teams. I Jwve worked for legislative and constitutional change in various areas within the victims' rights movement. In other words, my experience transcends the academic into the practical and the legal into the programmatic. Increasingly, students at Northwest­ern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College who are interested in animal law and advocating for animals come to me for assistance in steering them into the law of crime victims. As a result of our contact we have all become aware of the potential for a significant relations/zip between the animal rights and crime victim rights movements. This awareness prompted Animal Law to invite me to write this essay which generally compares legal advocate challenges in the animal rights and human crime victims' rights movements. Due to my amateur level of knowledge in the field of animal rights, I expect the essay will fail to acknowledge someone in that field who may deserve credit. For this probability, I apologize. I hope that my e:r:pertise with the human crime victims' rights movement and the dynamic of the criminal justice process will make up somewhat for my amateur status as a student of animal rights.

Recommended Citation

Douglas E. Beloof, Crime Victims' Rights: Critical Concepts for Animal Rights, 7 Animal L. Rev. 19 (2001).
Available at: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/alr/vol7/iss1/5