Animals as Legal Beings | Maneesha Deckha

Our legal system is failing animals by treating them as either property or persons. Maneesha Deckha, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria and author of Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, joins us. Highlights include: Highlights include: Maneesha’s personal journey into exploring the links between animal legal studies and critical animal studies, health law, reproductive ethics, feminist analysis of law, and postcolonial and critical race theory; Deckha’s evaluation of the 2022 decision by the New York Court of Appeals with respect to the ongoing captivity of Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo, in which she outlines why the dissociation of humans from animals is counterproductive to eliminating racism and other intra-human prejudices and inequities; How the legal classification of animals as “property” creates problems, such as commodification and objectification; meanwhile, using the “personhood” category for animals exacerbates the concept of human exceptionalism. Deckha argues for a new category of “beingness’ for nonhuman animals which recognizes their embodiment, relationality, and vulnerability; A new six-part series documentary series targeted towards secondary school students, A Deeper Kindness: Animal Law and Youth Activism, which surveys the current field of animal law and policy through the eyes of four youth active in animal advocacy. See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:  https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/maneesha-deckha ABOUT US OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance [Formerly The Overpopulation Podcast] OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.  Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.  Learn more at populationbalance.org Copyright 2025 Population Balance