The Animal Law & Policy Clinic provides students with direct hands-on experience in animal advocacy on behalf of both captive animals and wildlife, including litigation, legislation, administrative practice, and policymaking.
Students will be introduced to the overarching issues that non-human animal law advocates face in their work, including rulemaking petitions, open-government laws, and basic litigation, legislative, administrative, and organizing strategies. Students also learn how to pursue advocacy under several substantive areas of the law, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Animal Welfare Act, the Humane Slaughter Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Wild Horse and Burros Act, and state animal cruelty codes.
How to Register
The Animal Law & Policy Clinic is offered in the Fall and Spring semesters. You can learn about the required clinical course component and clinical credits, in the Course Catalog.
Meet the Instructors
Rachel Mathews
Clinical Instructor
1607 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Rachel Mathews is an animal rights attorney and activist. Prior to joining Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic, she served as Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement at the PETA Foundation, where she helped build a team of lawyers, veterinarians, captive wildlife specialists, and other professionals to fight industries that exploit wild animals for entertainment, such as circuses and Tiger King-style roadside zoos. She has particular expertise in elephants and traveling animal acts, and her legal advocacy has encompassed a broad range of laws at all levels of government, including the Animal Welfare Act, Endangered Species Act, Freedom of Information Act, state and local wildlife laws, worker and consumer protection laws, and more.
Rebecca Garverman
Clinical Fellow
1607 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138
Rebecca Garverman is a graduate of Harvard Law School, class of 2021. Rebecca previously worked as a Junior Associate at Goodwin Procter, working primarily in the Life Sciences Intellectual Property and Strategic Transactions practice. As a 3L at HLS, Rebecca won both 2021 Animal Law & Policy Writing prizes and served as the Communications Chair of the Animal Law Society.
Carney Anne Nasser
Clinic Research Fellow
1607 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138
Carney Anne Nasser is a career animal protection attorney and big cat expert who has been described by Rachel Nuwer of the New York Times as “the go-to person in the country for laws pertaining to big cat ownership.” Indeed, it is Carney Anne who pitched the wildlife trafficking case against the infamous “Tiger King” Joe Exotic to the Department of Justice and federal investigators that triggered a five-year investigation leading to his conviction for multiple federal crimes.
Kelley McGill
Regulatory Policy Fellow
Kelley is a food and animal law attorney specialized in the regulation of alternative proteins. She has worked for the Good Food Institute, representing the nonprofit before the federal government, and consulted for organizations active in the alternative protein policy space. Kelley also worked for the Vermont General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Counsel, where she researched and drafted legislation related to food, agriculture, and the environment.
Previously, as a student in the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic, Kelley co-authored a petition from the Clinic to USDA that helped spur the agency to issue a favorable advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding cultivated meat product labels. Also while in law school, she served as a legal fellow for the US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry and as a judicial intern for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kelley received a BA magna cum laude in International Studies and a BS magna cum laude in Business Administration from Trinity University. She holds a JD cum laude from Harvard Law School. Kelley lives in Vermont, her home state, where she is licensed to practice law.
Staff Members
| Sarah Pickering | Communications Director | spickering@law.harvard.edu |
| Marina Apostol | Clinic Assistant | mapostol@law.harvard.edu |
In the News
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Harvard Highlights the Cruel, Far-Reaching Implications of Prop 12 Challenge Before U.S. Supreme Court
Today (Monday, August 15), Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court in support of California’s Proposition 12, in the case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.
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Clinic petitions National Institutes of Health to protect octopuses
The NIH’s current policy that defines which animals are entitled to be handled humanely excludes all invertebrates, including cephalopods. However, because of their extraordinary brains, these animals–particularly octopuses–are increasingly the focus of much federal-funded research.
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Clinics Collaborate on Cultivated Meat Labeling Comments
Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic and Food Law and Policy Clinic jointly submitted public comments in response to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (USDA-FSIS) Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on the labeling of meat and poultry products comprised of or containing cultured animal cells.
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Federal Appeals Court Reverses Failure to Protect Pacific Walrus
Breaking: Clinic amicus brief quoted by judge who today ruled that the Trump administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service improperly denied Endangered Species Act protections to the Pacific walrus.
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Biden Urged to Pull Unlawful Trump, G.W. Bush Endangered Species Act Rules
More than two dozen leading scientists and law professors led by Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program and the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned President Joe Biden today to immediately rescind key policies that restrict the government’s consideration of harms from greenhouse gas emissions on animals such as the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.