The State Bar of Michigan’s Animal Law Section Council recently announced that Annie Sloan, a Michigan Law School student, and Rebecca Sutton, a student at Michigan State University College of Law, are the recipients of the 2023 Wanda Nash Award.
The annual award recognizes graduating students from Michigan law schools who have had the most impact on animal law, based on nominations by law school professors.
It was established in 2006 as a tribute to the section's founder. Both Sutton and Sloan served on the Animal Law Section Council this past year as their school’s law student representative.
Sutton was nominated by Prof. David Favre who called her “one of our best.”
In addition to her animal law classes, during law school she interned for several national animal welfare organizations gaining varied and substantive experiences in research, writing, the regulatory system, litigation strategy, the politics/policy in issues from the protection of wildlife to puppy mills.
Sutton was a leader in MSU’s Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, serving as president this past year with a priority on engagement with students who are less familiar with animal law through events geared toward more general audiences.
Meanwhile, Sutton planned the 2023 symposium for the Journal of Animal and Natural Resources Law, “The Cross-Section of Animal Law and the First Amendment,” as the journal’s Managing Editor, which included securing participation of well-known experts in the field and moderating the virtual event.
She has been volunteering for a Michigan-based animal law organization by compiling a spreadsheet of relevant federal regulatory actions for use in the organization’s monthly newsletter.
“She is a top-rated student who is fully committed to the animal issues that Wanda cared about,” Favre said. “Her high motivation for animals has resulted in several activities not normally engaged in by law students.”
Sloan was nominated by Profs. Andy Buchsbaum, Nicolas Cornell and William Novak.
They cited her scholarship and unwavering efforts to bring an animal law perspective to all her endeavors as well as her development of the Michigan Law’s Food Equity & Ecological Diversity Society (FEEDSoc), reflecting her interest in food and environmental justice.
The professors also noted Sloan’s advocacy at the law school and campus-wide to stop the use of pesticides, rodenticides, and glue traps.
Sloan has interned for national organizations and has co-written as well a proposal that has been selected for the Oxford Summer School of Animal Ethics in August 2023.
She has served as the editor-in-chief of the Michigan Journal of Law & Society, featuring scholarship at the intersection of law, history and social science.
“I am continually impressed at how she continually explores and expands the role of law to improve the lives of animals,” Buchsbaum said.
Novak added that Sloan “is fully dedicated to this cause and works in each and every class she takes to get faculty and colleagues to consider animal law and animal rights perspectives and to try to change the way humans treat other animals.”
The Animal Law Section was founded in 1995 and is the first State Bar section in the country ocused on animal law.
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