2020-2021 Emerging Scholars Fellows
Elizabeth MeLampy
Harvard Law School
“I envision a project critically examining the role of language in the law, and arguing that language itself can be an imposition on cultural—here, species-based—minorities…I hope to explore how language is both a tool and a weapon in establishing legal categories and ultimately substantive justice.”
Mary Offutt-Reagin
Georgetown University Law Center
“I am particularly interested in constructions of the human and nonhuman as cultural performance, and in the effects of those cultural species delineations on societal policies. Using theories of philosopher of biology John Dupré as a starting point, I intend to examine how interpretations of who is (and is not) an “animal” constitute a species of folk taxonomy in the law, and how that taxonomy is both influenced by and influences cultural perceptions and protections of nonhuman animals.”
Andrew Stawasz
Harvard Law School
“My interest in what policymaking processes capture and omit, combined with my interest in animal law, led me to my current research focus: how cost-benefit analyses systematically fail to account for nonhuman animals’ interests. Such omission yields policies that are insufficiently sensitive to harms that accrue, or foregone benefits that would accrue, to such animals. My ongoing writing projects argue that such insensitivity is unjustifiable as a matter of morality and of policy. They also suggest ways in which regulators can most tractably and accurately value nonhuman animals’ interests.”
Mentors of the Emerging Scholars Fellows
Taimie Bryant
UCLA School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles
Maneesha Deckha
Faculty of Law, University of Victoria
Douglas Kysar
Yale Law School, Yale University
Justin Marceau
Sturm College of Law, University of Denver
Janice Nadler
Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern University
Kristen Stilt
Harvard Law School, Harvard University