By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
Michigan Law recent graduate Eli Massey notes that in most American animal law cases, animals are treated and described as property or things.
“But if you asked most people about their cat or dog, they’d say, ‘They’re a member of the family, not property.’ We all recognize animals are conscious creatures capable of experiencing pleasure and pain,” Massey says. “I think the law should recognize that too and not treat animals as property.”
In order to bring a lawsuit, he adds, you need standing, meaning a court recognizes you are a proper party to file a lawsuit. Massey cites the 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton case, in which Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote a famous dissent raising the possibility lawsuits can be filed on behalf of nature.
“At first blush, this suggestion seems silly. But corporations are considered legal persons, with constitutional and other rights, and can file lawsuits,” Massey says. “Ships are said to have legal personhood. Infants, who lack the cognitive capacity to consent to or understand legal proceedings can have lawsuits filed on their behalf. Even decedents can have lawsuits brought on their behalf, or on behalf of their estates.
“Animal standing doesn’t necessarily have to operate in the exact same way as a human standing. But when you survey the full spectrum of legal personhood and standing, it seems way less outrageous that animals should be entitled to legal protections and even rights vindicated through lawsuits brought on their behalf.”
Nominated by Michigan Law Professor Nicolas Cornell, Massey is one of two recipients of the annual Wanda A. Nash Award, named after the founder of the State Bar of Michigan’s Animal Law Section and recognizing a 3L law student at a Michigan law school for substantial contributions to animal law. The co-recipient is Lauren Duguid from Michigan State University College of Law.
“I'm extremely honored and grateful to the State Bar of Michigan Animal Law Section for this recognition,” Massey says. “By all accounts, Wanda Nash was an incredibly warm and loving person who was very passionate about animal rights. Furthermore, she was a visionary in pursuing animal law so many years ago and chairing the first animal law
section of a state bar organization in the country.”
Prior to law school, Massey was an activist and a journalist, earning an undergrad degree in English from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. His work has been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Reader, Jacobin, Current Affairs, the Progressive, Mondoweiss, In These Times, and elsewhere. He was inspired to study law after reading autobiographies of several radical lawyers from the 1960s.
“They showed me the legal system could be used to support the causes and movements I care about,” he says.
Massey says he has thoroughly enjoyed his three years at Michigan Law in Ann Arbor.
“There are a lot of things I've really loved—the stellar professors, many of whom are leading experts in their respective areas of law, the intellectual rigor, and the collegial environment,” he says. “And I've especially enjoyed having the opportunity to delve deeply into the subject matter I'm most passionate about including animal law, criminal procedure, Indian law, prison law, civil liberties, and civil rights.”
According to Massey, animal liberation is one of the defining issues of our time.
“Billions of animals are killed each year for food in the United States alone, frequently in the most cruel and depraved ways you can imagine. If the scale of that suffering wasn't already difficult enough to wrap your brain around, many more animals are tortured and subjected to a dizzying variety of—often—legalized barbarism in labs, farms, and elsewhere,” he says.
“In the face of this system of mass industrial slaughter, built on the suffering and death of billions of creatures, most people go about their lives as if there weren't unfathomable atrocities unfolding every day. It can sometimes make me feel like I'm crazy. But there are many instances of societies perpetrating horrible crimes then years later concluding that what they did was wrong.
“I think my passion for animal liberation is rooted in this fundamental sense that what we do to animals is indefensible and morally wrong, and, at the same time, most of the world is either indifferent to animal suffering or believes it's justifiable.”
Massey also says generally there tends to be too much emphasis on individual consumptive habits and not enough on the systems, companies, farms, and slaughterhouses. “The decisions of individual consumers obviously matter—I wouldn't be a vegan if I thought they didn't—but I try to spend way more time thinking strategically about how the animal liberation movement can most effectively challenge animal agriculture, for example,” he says.
He notes the dearth of federal laws regulating the living conditions of farmed animals, adding that the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), for example—which based on the name sounds like a broad, general law that covers all animals—doesn't apply to farmed animals that constitute approximately 98 percent of the animals that humans interact with in the United States. The AWA applies to less than 2 percent of animals in the United States, and also exempts rats, birds, and mice, that make up 99 percent of animals used in research.
“The ridiculously named Humane Methods of Slaughter Act exempts birds or poultry, which make up over 90 percent of land animals farmed in the United States. The modest 28-Hour Law requires that when animals are being transported across state lines for more than 28 hours, they need to be given a few hours for rest, water, and food. But it also exempts birds and contains other significant exemptions,” he says.
“Congress has practically given farms and slaughterhouses carte blanche to treat animals in whatever grisly and gruesome way they want,” he adds. “This means it’s perfectly legal to keep animals in gestation crates so small they cannot move, castrate them while they’re unanesthetized, electrocute them while they’re dunked into vats of water, and even kill them in gas chambers.
“While Congress has effectively abdicated its role in regulating the living conditions of farmed animals, it has simultaneously passed laws like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which brands animal activists as terrorists for interfering with animal enterprises. That’s what happened, for example, to a guy who freed some minks.
“States similarly often exempt farmed animals from coverage under their animal cruelty statutes and have attempted to pass Agricultural-Gag—Ag-Gag—laws that criminalize the exposure of conditions to the public, though those laws have often been found to violate the First Amendment. In short, we need Congress to step up, do its job, and regulate this industry that has for far too long gotten away with murder.”
Last summer, Massey interned as a law clerk at the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., drawn to working there because of its long history of representing animal liberation and climate justice activists, and in particular their work in support of Green Scare defendants where the U.S. government brought legal action against the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and others.
“I loved getting to work on cases for George Floyd protesters, Atlanta Forest Defenders, Food Not Bombs, pro-choice activists, antifascists, and others,” he says. “Every morning, I woke up excited to get to work.”
Massey has been active for years with Food Not Bombs, an organization that cooks vegan food and serves it to the public for free.
“The idea behind Food Not Bombs is that it makes no sense that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we still have people going hungry,” he says. “This country always seems to have money for war and the military but can’t ensure people have three nutritious meals a day.
Food Not Bombs is about creating a society where members of the community can come together to share a cruelty-free meal.”
On a related note, he believes it is important that animal liberation activists not get siloed, that building cross-movement solidarity is critical.
“Organizing is not about preaching to the choir—it's about reaching and persuading people who don’t already agree with us,” he says. ‘An effective way to start that process is by building goodwill with people working on other causes through solidarity.”
Massey is heading to the Big Apple this fall.“I’m thrilled to be starting my career as a public defender in New York City,” he says. “One day I would love to represent activists in criminal defense and civil rights cases.”
Massey grew up with cats, and hopes to adopt or foster a companion animal once he is more settled post-law school.
“My sister has a pit bull, Roxy, whom I adore, and she refers to me as Ammo Eli—Arabic for uncle—whenever she's discussing me with Roxy, so I still have companion animals in my life that I love even though none are living with me at the moment.”
Vegetarian at the age of 12, Massey went vegan as an adult. At the Award ceremony his twin sister shared how she was inspired by him to become a vegetarian.
“A few years after she joined me, my mom joined us,” Massey says. “It may seem obvious in retrospect, but I don’t think I realized I’d inspired them and it was cool to hear I had had that effect.
“I understand it’s not always easy to make the transition, but any steps people can take in reducing their consumption of animal products is a shift in the right direction, even if going completely vegetarian or vegan feels initially too daunting.”
Legal News
Michigan Law recent graduate Eli Massey notes that in most American animal law cases, animals are treated and described as property or things.
“But if you asked most people about their cat or dog, they’d say, ‘They’re a member of the family, not property.’ We all recognize animals are conscious creatures capable of experiencing pleasure and pain,” Massey says. “I think the law should recognize that too and not treat animals as property.”
In order to bring a lawsuit, he adds, you need standing, meaning a court recognizes you are a proper party to file a lawsuit. Massey cites the 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton case, in which Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote a famous dissent raising the possibility lawsuits can be filed on behalf of nature.
“At first blush, this suggestion seems silly. But corporations are considered legal persons, with constitutional and other rights, and can file lawsuits,” Massey says. “Ships are said to have legal personhood. Infants, who lack the cognitive capacity to consent to or understand legal proceedings can have lawsuits filed on their behalf. Even decedents can have lawsuits brought on their behalf, or on behalf of their estates.
“Animal standing doesn’t necessarily have to operate in the exact same way as a human standing. But when you survey the full spectrum of legal personhood and standing, it seems way less outrageous that animals should be entitled to legal protections and even rights vindicated through lawsuits brought on their behalf.”
Nominated by Michigan Law Professor Nicolas Cornell, Massey is one of two recipients of the annual Wanda A. Nash Award, named after the founder of the State Bar of Michigan’s Animal Law Section and recognizing a 3L law student at a Michigan law school for substantial contributions to animal law. The co-recipient is Lauren Duguid from Michigan State University College of Law.
“I'm extremely honored and grateful to the State Bar of Michigan Animal Law Section for this recognition,” Massey says. “By all accounts, Wanda Nash was an incredibly warm and loving person who was very passionate about animal rights. Furthermore, she was a visionary in pursuing animal law so many years ago and chairing the first animal law
section of a state bar organization in the country.”
Prior to law school, Massey was an activist and a journalist, earning an undergrad degree in English from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. His work has been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Reader, Jacobin, Current Affairs, the Progressive, Mondoweiss, In These Times, and elsewhere. He was inspired to study law after reading autobiographies of several radical lawyers from the 1960s.
“They showed me the legal system could be used to support the causes and movements I care about,” he says.
Massey says he has thoroughly enjoyed his three years at Michigan Law in Ann Arbor.
“There are a lot of things I've really loved—the stellar professors, many of whom are leading experts in their respective areas of law, the intellectual rigor, and the collegial environment,” he says. “And I've especially enjoyed having the opportunity to delve deeply into the subject matter I'm most passionate about including animal law, criminal procedure, Indian law, prison law, civil liberties, and civil rights.”
According to Massey, animal liberation is one of the defining issues of our time.
“Billions of animals are killed each year for food in the United States alone, frequently in the most cruel and depraved ways you can imagine. If the scale of that suffering wasn't already difficult enough to wrap your brain around, many more animals are tortured and subjected to a dizzying variety of—often—legalized barbarism in labs, farms, and elsewhere,” he says.
“In the face of this system of mass industrial slaughter, built on the suffering and death of billions of creatures, most people go about their lives as if there weren't unfathomable atrocities unfolding every day. It can sometimes make me feel like I'm crazy. But there are many instances of societies perpetrating horrible crimes then years later concluding that what they did was wrong.
“I think my passion for animal liberation is rooted in this fundamental sense that what we do to animals is indefensible and morally wrong, and, at the same time, most of the world is either indifferent to animal suffering or believes it's justifiable.”
Massey also says generally there tends to be too much emphasis on individual consumptive habits and not enough on the systems, companies, farms, and slaughterhouses. “The decisions of individual consumers obviously matter—I wouldn't be a vegan if I thought they didn't—but I try to spend way more time thinking strategically about how the animal liberation movement can most effectively challenge animal agriculture, for example,” he says.
He notes the dearth of federal laws regulating the living conditions of farmed animals, adding that the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), for example—which based on the name sounds like a broad, general law that covers all animals—doesn't apply to farmed animals that constitute approximately 98 percent of the animals that humans interact with in the United States. The AWA applies to less than 2 percent of animals in the United States, and also exempts rats, birds, and mice, that make up 99 percent of animals used in research.
“The ridiculously named Humane Methods of Slaughter Act exempts birds or poultry, which make up over 90 percent of land animals farmed in the United States. The modest 28-Hour Law requires that when animals are being transported across state lines for more than 28 hours, they need to be given a few hours for rest, water, and food. But it also exempts birds and contains other significant exemptions,” he says.
“Congress has practically given farms and slaughterhouses carte blanche to treat animals in whatever grisly and gruesome way they want,” he adds. “This means it’s perfectly legal to keep animals in gestation crates so small they cannot move, castrate them while they’re unanesthetized, electrocute them while they’re dunked into vats of water, and even kill them in gas chambers.
“While Congress has effectively abdicated its role in regulating the living conditions of farmed animals, it has simultaneously passed laws like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which brands animal activists as terrorists for interfering with animal enterprises. That’s what happened, for example, to a guy who freed some minks.
“States similarly often exempt farmed animals from coverage under their animal cruelty statutes and have attempted to pass Agricultural-Gag—Ag-Gag—laws that criminalize the exposure of conditions to the public, though those laws have often been found to violate the First Amendment. In short, we need Congress to step up, do its job, and regulate this industry that has for far too long gotten away with murder.”
Last summer, Massey interned as a law clerk at the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., drawn to working there because of its long history of representing animal liberation and climate justice activists, and in particular their work in support of Green Scare defendants where the U.S. government brought legal action against the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and others.
“I loved getting to work on cases for George Floyd protesters, Atlanta Forest Defenders, Food Not Bombs, pro-choice activists, antifascists, and others,” he says. “Every morning, I woke up excited to get to work.”
Massey has been active for years with Food Not Bombs, an organization that cooks vegan food and serves it to the public for free.
“The idea behind Food Not Bombs is that it makes no sense that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we still have people going hungry,” he says. “This country always seems to have money for war and the military but can’t ensure people have three nutritious meals a day.
Food Not Bombs is about creating a society where members of the community can come together to share a cruelty-free meal.”
On a related note, he believes it is important that animal liberation activists not get siloed, that building cross-movement solidarity is critical.
“Organizing is not about preaching to the choir—it's about reaching and persuading people who don’t already agree with us,” he says. ‘An effective way to start that process is by building goodwill with people working on other causes through solidarity.”
Massey is heading to the Big Apple this fall.“I’m thrilled to be starting my career as a public defender in New York City,” he says. “One day I would love to represent activists in criminal defense and civil rights cases.”
Massey grew up with cats, and hopes to adopt or foster a companion animal once he is more settled post-law school.
“My sister has a pit bull, Roxy, whom I adore, and she refers to me as Ammo Eli—Arabic for uncle—whenever she's discussing me with Roxy, so I still have companion animals in my life that I love even though none are living with me at the moment.”
Vegetarian at the age of 12, Massey went vegan as an adult. At the Award ceremony his twin sister shared how she was inspired by him to become a vegetarian.
“A few years after she joined me, my mom joined us,” Massey says. “It may seem obvious in retrospect, but I don’t think I realized I’d inspired them and it was cool to hear I had had that effect.
“I understand it’s not always easy to make the transition, but any steps people can take in reducing their consumption of animal products is a shift in the right direction, even if going completely vegetarian or vegan feels initially too daunting.”
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