Animal Law Clinic
By Frances Presma/Photos: Don Hamerman
Animal Law Clinic Launched
Interviewing at Raleigh’s Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, the firm she will be joining this summer, Kelli Ovies ’06 was delighted to find that the associate she was meeting shared her interest in animals and animal law. Ovies hopes to build a pro bono practice around animal law cases in her future career and says she chose Duke Law School in part because it offered a class in the subject, taught by Charles L. B. Lowndes Emeritus Professor of Law Bill Reppy. Having taken Reppy’s class as a 2L, Ovies is now getting a taste for the field as a member of the inaugural class of Duke’s Animal Law Clinic.
Funded through the $1 million Bob Barker Endowment for the Study of Animal Law and directed by Jeff Welty ’99. The Clinic functions on an outplacement model, matching students with lawyers and organizations handling animal matters.
The students’ field placements reflect the enormous range of issues involved in animal law, says Welty, who points out that it cross-cuts a number of substantive legal fields. Students are currently involved in drafting a new animal control ordinance for Lee County, North Carolina, aiding the prosecution of a high-profile animal cruelty case there, handling the transactional work needed to establish a non-profit foundation for the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Association relating to animal welfare, and working on “impact litigation” with the National Humane Society of the United States.
Welty handles veterinary malpractice cases in his own Durham practice that focuses primarily on criminal defense work in capital and serious federal felony cases. His interest in animal law was nurtured by Reppy during law school and in the years following. “Bill gets a lot of calls on these issues, and has encouraged me to take cases on and to come back and work at the Law School.” For his part, Reppy calls Welty “one of our most outstanding graduates.” The two were co-organizers of an April 7 symposium on animal law sponsored by Law & Contemporary Problems (L&CP); Welty’s article on the federal Humane Slaughter Act will be published in the resulting L&CP symposium issue.
An advocate of clinical education, Welty took part in the AIDS Legal Project and Criminal Litigation Clinic as a 3L. “It was great to have actual clients and begin to assume the lawyer’s role,” he says. “Since my practice is mostly criminal defense, from day one I had client interactions. Having already had some experience working with clients and organizing and building up an actual case was critical for me.” The Animal Law Clinic will offer similar opportunities to students, he says, adding that some ethical issues they confront may be unique to animal law.
It's like getting into intellectual property law just as the internet was starting up - new and dynamic.
- Ben Stark '06
“Your client is a person, but your driving interest in the field is your interest in animals. There is an ethical issue to address regarding what happens when the interests of those two parties conflict. From there, the skills that students build will depend on their placements, and their placements depend on their interests.”
Welty makes a clear distinction, often overlooked, between animal rights, which in its most expansive meaning implies a special legal standing for animals apart from the traditional notion of property, and animal welfare, which deals with the well-being of and prohibition against cruelty to animals. Clinic students are being exposed to a wide range of perspectives through guest speakers, including animal rights activists and the veterinarian who monitors Duke University’s compliance with laws governing the use of animals in research.
“Most of the clinical placements have nothing to do with animal rights but are efforts to protect animals through conventional means,” says Welty, using the Lee County placement to illustrate his point. “A good, modern animal control ordinance is an important tool for public safety and animal welfare and has nothing to do with animal rights.”
Although television personality Bob Barker made endowments to five law schools nationwide to be used in some aspect of animal law, Duke is the only one to establish a clinic. That was a prime attraction of the Clinic to Ben Stark ’06 who will be heading for a job as a trial attorney with the Department of Labor’s Honor Program in Atlanta following graduation.
“It’s like getting into intellectual property law just as the internet was starting up — new and dynamic.”
