Beluga whales swim in a tank at Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ont., Friday, June 9, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS / Chris Young

What is animal law, and why has it been growing in popularity in recent years? In this talk, Angela Fernandez, professor at the Faculty of Law, will explore some of the challenges involved in increasing protection for animals while offering insights into the future of animal law and its impact on society.

Across all three campuses

What is animal law, and why has it been growing in popularity in recent years? In this talk, Angela Fernandez, professor at the Faculty of Law, will explore some of the challenges involved in increasing protection for animals while offering insights into the future of animal law and its impact on society.

Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities  Presents:

Guest: Adam Iggers

Title: Amplified Indigenous Ontologies: Towards a Tactical Resolution of the Tension Between Animal Rights and Indigenous Rights

Abstract: This paper examines the enduring tension between the animal rights movement—which seeks to end human-inflicted suffering of non-human animals—and Indigenous rights movements that defend cultural practices involving the taking of animal life. It critiques existing attempts by animal rights scholars, notably Will Kymlicka, Sue Donaldson, and Claire Jean Kim, to reconcile these positions, arguing that such efforts often privilege animal rights frameworks and thereby reproduce colonial hierarchies while undermining efforts to reduce animal suffering. Drawing on Indigenous ontologies from Mi’kmaq and Kluane traditions and on models of societal transformation borrowed from transition theory, the paper proposes a tactical shift: instead of challenging Indigenous hunting practices, animal rights advocates should amplify Indigenous understandings of reciprocal, respectful human–animal relations. These ontologies disrupt the dissociation and commodification underpinning the animal industrial complex, which is the principal source of global animal suffering. By tactically aligning animal liberation with decolonization, the paper contends that amplifying Indigenous worldviews can more effectively advance both the reduction of animal suffering and the dismantling of settler-colonial structures.

Bio: Adam Iggers graduated from the J.D. program at the University of Toronto Jackman Faculty of Law in 2023. He is currently an Associate at the law firm Paliare Roland. He took Animals and the Law at Jackman Law in 2022 and his Supervised Upper Year Research Paper (SUYRP) “Amplified Indigenous Ontologies: Towards a Tactical Resolution of the Tension Between Animal Rights and Indigenous Rights” was completed as a component of the JD Certificate in Aboriginal Law, winning the Justin Basinger Memorial Award (2023). His paper has been accepted for publication in the Indigenous Law Journal.

Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities  Presents:

Guest: Adam Iggers

Title: Amplified Indigenous Ontologies: Towards a Tactical Resolution of the Tension Between Animal Rights and Indigenous Rights

Abstract: This paper examines the enduring tension between the animal rights movement—which seeks to end human-inflicted suffering of non-human animals—and Indigenous rights movements that defend cultural practices involving the taking of animal life. It critiques existing attempts by animal rights scholars, notably Will Kymlicka, Sue Donaldson, and Claire Jean Kim, to reconcile these positions, arguing that such efforts often privilege animal rights frameworks and thereby reproduce colonial hierarchies while undermining efforts to reduce animal suffering. Drawing on Indigenous ontologies from Mi’kmaq and Kluane traditions and on models of societal transformation borrowed from transition theory, the paper proposes a tactical shift: instead of challenging Indigenous hunting practices, animal rights advocates should amplify Indigenous understandings of reciprocal, respectful human–animal relations. These ontologies disrupt the dissociation and commodification underpinning the animal industrial complex, which is the principal source of global animal suffering. By tactically aligning animal liberation with decolonization, the paper contends that amplifying Indigenous worldviews can more effectively advance both the reduction of animal suffering and the dismantling of settler-colonial structures.

Bio: Adam Iggers graduated from the J.D. program at the University of Toronto Jackman Faculty of Law in 2023. He is currently an Associate at the law firm Paliare Roland. He took Animals and the Law at Jackman Law in 2022 and his Supervised Upper Year Research Paper (SUYRP) “Amplified Indigenous Ontologies: Towards a Tactical Resolution of the Tension Between Animal Rights and Indigenous Rights” was completed as a component of the JD Certificate in Aboriginal Law, winning the Justin Basinger Memorial Award (2023). His paper has been accepted for publication in the Indigenous Law Journal.

Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities  Presents:

Guest: Peter Bo Zhang

Title: The Living Corpus of Indigenous Harvest Rights

Abstract: Across Canada, Indigenous harvest rights are constitutionally recognized even as the animal populations that sustain them continue to erode. This paper advances the concept of a harvest right’s “living corpus”: the abundance, health, habitat relations, and lived presence of the animals through which harvesting remains a meaningful practice over time. It shows how environmental regulation manages cumulative ecological decline through baselines calibrated to minimum viable population (MVP), leaving the ecological substance of section 35 rights outside constitutional supervision. Treating harvest rights as living relationships, the paper argues that ecological integrity forms part of the protected interest once a species-linked right is proven. Indigenous guardianship is theorized as governance of the living corpus through first-responder responsibility and longitudinal record-making, rather than as supplementary evidence within state regimes. Finally, the paper suggests that Crown fiduciary duty supplies a restrained basis for reviewing discretionary decisions that foreseeably undermine the living corpus, without requiring courts to manage ecosystems or adjudicate Indigenous ontologies.

Bio: Peter Bo Zhang is a JD candidate at the University of Toronto. His research explores human-animal relations through the lenses of law, history, anthropology, STS, and religion. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Animal History, China’s Environmental History: A Reader (Columbia University Press), and International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication (Springer Nature). He holds a BA from McGill University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge

Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities  Presents:

Guest: Peter Bo Zhang

Title: The Living Corpus of Indigenous Harvest Rights

Abstract: Across Canada, Indigenous harvest rights are constitutionally recognized even as the animal populations that sustain them continue to erode. This paper advances the concept of a harvest right’s “living corpus”: the abundance, health, habitat relations, and lived presence of the animals through which harvesting remains a meaningful practice over time. It shows how environmental regulation manages cumulative ecological decline through baselines calibrated to minimum viable population (MVP), leaving the ecological substance of section 35 rights outside constitutional supervision. Treating harvest rights as living relationships, the paper argues that ecological integrity forms part of the protected interest once a species-linked right is proven. Indigenous guardianship is theorized as governance of the living corpus through first-responder responsibility and longitudinal record-making, rather than as supplementary evidence within state regimes. Finally, the paper suggests that Crown fiduciary duty supplies a restrained basis for reviewing discretionary decisions that foreseeably undermine the living corpus, without requiring courts to manage ecosystems or adjudicate Indigenous ontologies.

Bio: Peter Bo Zhang is a JD candidate at the University of Toronto. His research explores human-animal relations through the lenses of law, history, anthropology, STS, and religion. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Animal History, China’s Environmental History: A Reader (Columbia University Press), and International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication (Springer Nature). He holds a BA from McGill University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge

Overview

Ricardo Díaz-Alarcón is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. His research interests are in animal law, comparative law, and legal theory, particularly the ways in which animal law intersects with the rights of nature and Indigenous legal orders.

Before joining the University of Toronto, Ricardo was awarded a Public Interest Fellowship from Harvard Law School to work at Animal Outlook, and has since served as a Legal Fellow at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Prior to that, he worked for two years as a legal and policy adviser for the city council in Bogotá, where he worked on legal reforms related to the use of animals.

Selected Publications

Andrea Padilla Villarraga and Ricardo Díaz-Alarcón, "Colombia", in The Oxford Handbook of Global Animal Law, eds. Anne Peters, Kristen Stilt, and Saskia Stucki. Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming).

Ricardo Díaz-Alarcón, “Narrating War: Odysseus’ Lies and Weeping as a Means to Resist Oblivion”, in To Ithaca from Guaviare: A Voyage to the Colombian Post-Conflict from Homer’s Poems [“Narrar la guerra: el llanto y la mentira de Odiseo como formas de resistir el olvido”, en A Ítaca desde el Guaviare: viaje al post-conflicto colombiano desde los poemas de Homero], ed. Rodrigo Verano. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2019. 

Ricardo Díaz-Alarcón, “Thirty Years of a Constitution Without Animals: Why and How to Solve It?” [Treinta años de una Constitución sin animales: ¿por qué y cómo remediarlo?], El Espectador, 2021.

LL.M., Harvard Law School (2023)
LL.B. cum laude, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (2020)
B.A. cum laude in Literature, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (2017)
 

Selected Honours and Awards

Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships Award

Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students

JD Hadley Family Foundation Doctoral Award

Harvard Law School's Public Service Venture Fund Fellowship

Jackman Law Building, Room J230

Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities  Presents:

Guest: Nandita Bajaj 

Title: Animal Liberation Through Procreative Justice

Bio: Nandita is an Advisor of the Animal Law Program. She is the Toronto-based Executive Director of Population Balance, a US nonprofit that works to inspire narrative, behavioural, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. She is the producer and host of two podcasts: OVERSHOOT and Beyond Pronatalism. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University. Her research and advocacy work focuses on the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice. She has delivered over 100 presentations globally and her work has appeared in major news outlets.