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Kathy Hessler

Kathy is Assistant Dean, Animal Legal Education at George Washington University Law School and Director of the Animal Legal Education Initiative. Kathy has been a clinical law professor for 30 years and has been teaching animal law for 22 years. She is the first law professor hired to teach animal law full-time. Kathy helped develop the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School (L&C). For fourteen years she taught there and directed the Animal Law Clinic. She also created and directed the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative and is the co-founder of World Aquatic Animal Day along with Amy P. Wilson. Kathy co-authored “Animal Law in a Nutshell”, “Animal Law – New Perspectives on  Teaching Traditional Law” and the amicus briefs submitted in the U.S. v. Stevens and Justice v. Gwendolyn Vercher cases. She has written numerous law review and other articles and teaches and lectures widely across the U.S. and internationally.

Kathy was a board member with the Animal Legal Defense Fund; helped found the Animal Law Committee of the Cuyahoga County Bar; and was the chair and a founder of the Animal Law Section and the Balance in Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS). She was also a co-chair of the Clinical Legal Education Section of the AALS, is on the board of the Center for Teaching Peace and is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

Kathy is vegan and has (at least) a sentiocentric moral scope. Kathy is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview.

Find our Sentientist Conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast.

Kathy at GWU
Kathy’s papers at SSRN

Latest work

Headshot of Justine Karst smiling towards the camera.

The Wood Wide Web and Do Plants Feel Pain? – Forest Ecologist Justine Karst on Sentientism ep:220

Justine Karst is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. A Sentientism conversation in part about the wood wide web and whether plants feel pain.
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The Wood Wide Web and Do Plants Feel Pain? – Forest Ecologist Justine Karst on Sentientism ep:220

Justine Karst is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. A Sentientism conversation in part about the wood wide web and whether plants feel pain.
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Free “Teaching the Sentientism Worldview” webinar – Jan 23

Happy New Year and a Happy New Term! Our FREE “Teaching the Sentientism Worldview” webinar for the Spring term is on Jan 23rd from 16:00-17:30 UK time. Sign up at Eventbrite […]
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“A dual indoctrination…” – Jim Mason on Sentientism Ep:219

A Sentientism conversation about what's real, who matters and how to make a better world with author and activist Jim Mason.
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