Kristen Stilt

Over the past few decades, the science of animal cognition has changed people’s understanding of other species. In several, researchers have discovered emotions, intelligence and behaviour once thought to belong exclusively to humans. But the law has changed slowly, and in one respect barely at all. Most legal systems treat the subjects of law as either people or property. There is no third category. ... The upshot is that “the law is a patchwork,” says Kristen Stilt, who teaches animal law at Harvard Law School. Animals still lack rights, but the bright line separating them from people has been dulled by sentience laws and rulings in India, Argentina and Colombia.

According to Harvard Law School lecturer Jonathan Lovvorn, saving the planet and its inhabitants from climate catastrophe begins with the world’s most vulnerable population: animals...“What we are trying to do with the program is multifold,” said [Kristen] Stilt, an expert in Islamic law and society who is writing a book on animal welfare and the halal industry. “We want to encourage and facilitate excellent academic writing and research in animal law, we want to train young lawyers passionate about the topic, and we want to engage with the broader community about these issues. We believe that ideas matter, and that ideas can spark change.”...One of his current students, Kate Barnekow, arrived at the Law School planning to focus on gender and sexual violence, until a student group introduced her to the animal law program and “the opportunities available through the law to help animals.” “I see my interest in animal law as a continuation of my interest in a spectrum of marginalized voices whose interests are not always represented in the legal world, which includes women and survivors and people with nonbinary identities,” said Barnekow, who plans to work in animal law after she graduates in May. “I came to Harvard to raise up those voices.”

A US expert in Islamic law says agricultural ministers and clerics in Kuwait and Qatar would be unlikely to view summer transport of sheep as halal-approved if they were shown the crowded conditions and animals forced to stand for weeks in their own excrement. Agriculture Minister David Littleproud flew to the Middle East yesterday to reassure ministers and importers in both countries that Australia’s live sheep trade would continue during the northern hemisphere summer, but under new conditions recommended by the veterinarian-led McCarthy review he initiated...But Harvard University professor Kristen Stilt, an expert and author of Animal Welfare in ­Islamic law, who has studied the Australian livestock trade, warns that the end of live exports could be hastened by a failure to meet Islamic food requirements and animal welfare laws signed by the Gulf Co-operation Council. She says even adopting a 28 per cent increase in pen space recommended by the McCarthy review is unlikely to satisfy strict Islamic law about “everything surrounding the consumption of meat by Muslims”. “It is clear to me that the footage we saw from the ships — the overcrowding, the inability of animals to lie down and rest, and the heat stress — does not comply with the requirements of Islamic law,” she said. Sheep standing or lying in their own excrement for weeks are at risk of contracting diseases and producing meat that is not halal, she says. “The same is true for animals confined in pens where other animals are becoming sick and dying. “This is not something that is considered discretionary, but rather a crucial part of living by the requirements of Islam.”

Animals Australia has urged Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to show shocking footage of cruelty on live export ships to his Middle Eastern counterparts. The minister is visiting Kuwait and Qatar to reassure those countries Australia will continue the trade of live sheep after a crackdown on dodgy exporters. In a letter to Mr Littleproud seen by AAP, Animals Australia chief executive Glenys Oogjes asks him to show the vision of sheep dying in their own filth on an August 2016 voyage to the Middle East. Almost 2500 animals died on that voyage...It comes after a US expert in Islamic law raised concerns about Middle Eastern countries supporting the trade if they were shown the conditions during the northern hemisphere summer. Harvard University professor Kristen Stilt said the overcrowding and heat stress present in the footage did not comply with Islamic law. "The sheep standing or lying in their own excrement for three weeks are also at risk for contracting diseases and producing meat that is not halal," she said.

...“The Massachusetts ballot measure is poised to be the single most progressive piece of farmed animal protection legislation ever passed in the United States,” said Christopher Green, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program. “Having this happen in our backyard as our program gets off the ground has allowed us to analyze the process in the classroom and given our students the opportunity to gain invaluable experience working directly on the campaign.” Thomas has found a welcome partner in the HLS program. With his recent gift of $1 million and a subsequent matching gift of $500,000 to support individual donations of up to $50,000 through December, he is hoping to make farm animals central to animal cruelty prevention. It’s a shared concern...The program’s work reaches well beyond U.S. borders. Its faculty director, Kristen Stilt, is collaborating with Harvard’s South Asia Institute to examine animal agriculture from the Middle East to Asia.

A week after Harvard Law School’s seal change became final, a group of faculty members are publicly speaking out in support of Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, charging that student activists at the school have not given her due credit for her efforts to address racial issues on campus. Seven Law School faculty members—Glenn Cohen, Randall L. Kennedy, Richard J. Lazarus, Todd D. Rakoff, Carol S. Steiker, Kristen A. Stilt, and David B. Wilkins—published an open letter in the Harvard Law Record Monday defending Minow. They wrote, “Our goal here is… to express our support and deep appreciation for Dean Minow and all that she has done during this difficult and important process, and to advance the cause of justice throughout her long and distinguished career.”

...“Animal welfare and animal rights are two different goals within the field of animal law,” explains law professor Kristen Stilt, who teaches the animal-law survey class—an annual course typically oversubscribed on the first day of registration... A gift from Bradley L. Goldberg, founder and president of the Animal Welfare Trust, has underwritten a new Animal Law & Policy Program intended to expand the animal-law curriculum, establish an academic fellowship program, and foster future academic gatherings and scholarship...That opportunity and responsibility fall largely to Stilt, the faculty director of the new program, and Chris Green, its executive director, who must decide how to design a curriculum that covers a topic intersecting with all other areas of legal study...This past May, Loeb University Professor and constitutional-law scholar Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus letter supporting NhRP’s request for an appeal in one of its first chimpanzee cases.

Whether it’s called ISIS or ISIL, few people a year ago had even heard of the radical Sunni Islamist group that had splintered from al-Qaida. But as the Iraq-based terrorist organization rapidly swarmed and took control of cities and towns in Iraq and Syria, it suddenly became a front-burner issue in American foreign policy...“I think that the name is instructive; it tells you what their goals are: They aim to create an Islamic state,” said Deborah Amos, an award-winning Middle East reporter for National Public Radio...Amos joined Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), and Professor Kristen Stilt, co-director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at HLS, for a wide-ranging discussion about ISIS before a standing-room crowd at Austin Hall Thursday afternoon.

A host of new faculty members arrived at Harvard Law School this academic year, and over the summer, Dean Martha Minow announced two new faculty who will join HLS in 2015.