The Animal Rights Movement and the Law: Engagement, Co-option and Resistance

Abstract

This thesis is a study of social movement engagement with law. It examines the collective challenges raised by the Animal Rights Movement in order to improve the legal protections in place for animals. Because all struggles commence on old ground, advocates who choose to work with law are by necessity drawn to make compromises, simply in order to engage with existing legal frameworks. This is because change must be leveraged on the basis of current standards and norms. However current frameworks are not ideologically neutral, they were put in place for specific purposes to serve specific objects and interests. In New Zealand, neoliberal ideology has played a particularly powerful role in shaping the laws, policies, structures and processes in place, ensuring economic interests are prioritised over other values and concerns. For the animal rights movement, this makes law an arena of struggle, in which to locate an argument or voice that will challenge the status quo and current balance struck. It has been argued that law is something that is actively constituted, that is pushed and pulled by a range of actors as they vie to contest legal meaning. Yet it has also been observed that not all participants come to law as equals. How then is law constituted in this context? What this study of the animal rights movement’s engagement with law enables, is an examination of the hegemonic processes that operate to insulate existing frameworks against reform. What it also highlights is that law is not only constituted by legislators, judges and industry groups within the confines of Parliament and official legal forum, legal meaning is also something that is constituted in the public realm. In this regard, the movement’s use of undercover investigations and civil disobedience has arguably been their most effective legal strategy. These actions serve to shine a light on the gap between law on the books and law in practice and create a powerful public discourse in support of reform.