Carceral Logics

Carceral logics permeate our thinking about humans and nonhumans. We imagine that greater punishment will reduce crime and make society safer. We hope that more convictions and policing for animal crimes will keep animals safe and elevate their social status. The dominant approach to human-animal relations is governed by an unjust imbalance of power that subordinates or ignores the interest nonhumans have in freedom. In this volume, Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau invited experts to provide insights into the complicated intersection of issues that arise in thinking about animal law, violence, mass incarceration, and social change. Advocates for enhancing the legal status of animals could learn a great deal from the history of other social movements. Social change lawyers and animal advocates, might learn lessons from each other about the interconnections of oppression as they work to achieve liberation for all. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. She is also the founder and coordinator of Wesleyan Animal Studies and the author or editor of over a dozen books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2021), Critical Terms for Animal Studies (2018), and The Ethics of Captivity (2014).

Justin Marceau is the Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Denver, Research Scholar at the Brooks Institute, and an active animal protection and civil rights litigator. He is the author of Beyond Cages (Cambridge, 2019).