Angela Fernandez
78 Queen's Park
Education
Overview
Angela Fernandez is a Professor and in-coming Director of the Animal Law Program at the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto with a cross-appointment in the Department of History. Her book Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a in-depth study of an (in)famous first possession property case involving a fox. She has co-edited several books on legal history and written numerous book chapters and articles, including “Not Quite Property, Not Quite Persons: A ‘Quasi’ Approach for Nonhuman Animals” 5 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law (2019): 155-232. She has been organizing a monthly Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities since 2013, sits on the Advisory Board of the Global Journal of Animal Law, was the 2023 inaugural Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Distinguished Animal Law Scholar in the Animal Law & Policy Institute, and she has been a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics since 2018. She also oversees the production of the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law & Policy’s Animal Law Digest: Canada Edition and the University of Toronto’s Animal Law Research Guide. From 2020-2023 she worked with Brooks and Animal Justice to organize the North American Animal Law Conference and the Canadian Animal Law Conference.
In addition to "Animals and the Law" (taught in the Fall of 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024), Professor Fernandez teaches Legal History. She is also the Chair of the Directed Research Program. She is interested in supervising students working on animal law and legal history topics at the JD and graduate level. Watch Professor Fernandez’s Video “Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person” in the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law & Policy Series “Animal Law Fundamentals”
Areas of Interest
- Animal Law
- Legal History
- Legal Theory
Research
Under Professor Fernandez's leadership, the University of Toronto is partnering with the Brooks Institute of Animal Rights, Law and Policy to publish the Canadian Animal Law Digest, a free twice-a-month update on developments in Canadian animal law. To subscribe to the Digest and get each issue delivered to your inbox, enter your information and scroll down to the Canadian flag at the bottom of this page.
Professor Fernandez also works with the Bora Laskin Law Library on updating the Animal Law Research Guide, launched in March 2022. It consists of lists of sources (books, chapters, book reviews, theses, journal articles, legislation, leading cases. podcasts, documentaries etc) in Canadian animal law, perfect for students looking for a research paper topic or for more senior scholars looking for orientation in terms of sources available in Canadian animal law.
Selected Publications
“Ontario’s Ag-Gag law, Where do Things Stand?” 33:3 Constitutional Forum 15-29 (25 February 2025)
“43 Lab Monkeys Escaped in South Carolina. They Have a Legal Claim to Freedom” (with Justin Marceau) Vox (11 November 2024)
“Anthropomorphizing Animals: Foxhunting Stories and the Nature Faker Controversy,” 1 Society and Animals (published online 21 May 2024; Author’s version)
“Pierson v. Post, Justice Angela Fernandez, Dissenting” in Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod and Elena Maria Marty-Nelson eds., Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 98-118
"Fish Farms in Canada: Where is the Law?" in in James Gacek & Richard Jochelson eds., Green Criminology and the Law (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 113-45
“Not Quite Property, Not Quite Persons: A ‘Quasi’ Approach for Nonhuman Animals,” 5 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law (2019): 155-232
Brooks U – Animal Law Fundamentals – “Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person” (documentary and working paper posted December 2021)
"What Happy the Elephant's Legal Case Tells Us About the Future of Animal Rights" (co-authored with Justin Marceau) Slate (magazine) (17 June 2022)
“Exemplary Legal Writing 2022, Books, Four Recommendations,” Reviews of Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau eds., Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press 2022), Alice Crary & Lori Gruen, Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory (Polity Press 2022), Jeff Sebo, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and Other Catastrophes (Oxford University Press 2022), and Jo-Anne McArthur & Keith Wilson, Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene (We Animals Media, 2020) Green Bag Almanac & Reader (2023): 56-64
“Eating that is not Self-Defeating,” Review of Josh Milburn, Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022) 26 Green Bag 2d (2023): 161-173
“Genuine Concern for Animals in England’s Nineteenth-Century Animal Protection Movement: The Case Against Reductionist Interpretations” Review Article on Diana Donald, Women Against Cruelty: Protection of Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) 41:1 Law and History Review (2023): 217-24
“Environmental Law, Standing, and the History of Sierra Club v. Morton,” Review of Daniel P. Selmi, Dawn at Mineral King Valley: The Sierra Club, the Disney Company, and the Rise of Environmental Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022) Journal of Things We Like (Lots) (2 March 2023)