The lawyers in private practice charge fees to human clients, like pet owners. Some groups, like the Animal Legal Defense Fund, pay salaries to staff lawyers. And lawyers for industry groups that battle the animal lawyers say millions of dollars are available from animal welfare groups to pay for work that advances their goals. Critics of the animal law movement, including livestock groups and representatives of pharmaceutical companies that rely on animal experimentation, say such rulings are an alarming foot in the courthouse door for advocates of animal rights. I look at this as an abuse of the system.
Lawyers concerned with animal issues say civil rights and environmental lawyers faced ridicule, too.
In interviews, several of them noted parallels with those who began the fights for integration and clean air. Ore. Animal Law serves as a manifesto for lawyers in the field. Steven M. Wise, a Boston lawyer who is to teach the course this spring at Harvard Law School, has argued in articles in the journal that rights to bodily integrity and liberty should be given first to chimpanzees and bonobos because they are so similar to people. Wise, who once listed a captive dolphin named Rainbow as the plaintiff in a suit against an aquarium, is one of a group of perhaps 30 lawyers across the country who spend most of their time on animal issues. Hundreds more, including lawyers at some of the country's largest law firms, handle animal cases on a volunteer basis.