Angela Fernandez

Overview

Angela Fernandez is a Professor and 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. The Animal Law Program launched in September 2025, creating the first dedicated animal law program in Canada. Its Director, Professor Fernandez oversees the production of the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law & Policy’s Animal Law Digest: Canada Edition  and the Bora Laskin Law Library Animal Law Research Guide. She consults with media frequently given her up-to-date knowledge of animal law topics. Professor Fernandez has over 60 publications in animal law and legal history, including her book Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and two co-edited book collections (2022 and 2012). She has been organizing a monthly Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities since 2013 and has been a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics since 2018. She was the 2023 inaugural Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Distinguished Animal Law Scholar in the Animal Law & Policy Institute and a Visiting Fellow with the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in the Lent Term 2026. 

In addition to "Animals and the Law" (taught in the Fall of 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024), Professor Fernandez teaches Legal History and Contract Law. 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” for a break-down of its accompanying Working Paper and “Not Quite Property, Not Quite Persons: A ‘Quasi’ Approach for Nonhuman Animals” 5 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law (2019): 155-232. This video also explains how her interest in animal law grew out of her book about the (in)famous fox case, Pierson v Post.