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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

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“The United Nations has two core defects” – Peace Entrepreneur Anders Reagan – on Sentientism Ep:225

Anders Reagan is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS). A Sentientism Conversation.
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“The United Nations has two core defects” – Peace Entrepreneur Anders Reagan – on Sentientism Ep:225

Anders Reagan is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS). A Sentientism Conversation.
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“We’re like babies running around with machine guns” – Mike Berners-Lee – on Sentientism ep:224

Mike Berners-Lee is a professor and fellow of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University. His latest book is A Climate of Truth. A Sentientism conversation.
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What (and who) Are Zoos For? – Heather Browning and ‪Walter Veit‬ on Sentientism ep:223

A Sentientism conversation with philosophers Heather Browning and Walter Veit about their book "What Are Zoos For?"
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