Advocate for counting animals in our legal system, and expert in how courts decide who counts.



    As Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, Christopher founded both the Access to Justice program to develop the procedural infrastructure animals need to participate in legal proceedings, and the Freedom From Cruelty program whose first lawsuit on behalf of the Ridglan dogs argued that statutory anti-cruelty protections should be enforceable rights held by the dogs and puppies themselves. He also directed the amicus strategy behind a published decision recognizing a dog as "immediate family" for an emotional distress claim. 

    Previously at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Christopher managed the successful effort to win a federal court's recognition of Colombia's cocaine hippos as "interested persons" entitled to seek witness testimony in the United States under 28 U.S.C. § 1782. He also petitioned the NIH to recognize that human-animal chimeras may qualify as human research subjects entitled to federal protection.

    A thread connects this work: the jurisprudence of nonhuman legal status. How courts recognize, shape, and revise legal status categories is not unique to animals. In the past, judges led the way in recognizing corporations and ships as nonhuman persons. And now, courts are confronted with questions about the legal status of animals, nature, artificial intelligence, and technologically engineered beings like human-animal hybrids and brain organoids. AI represents an especially urgent case because legal status is a potential tool for safety—obligations on AI systems, vicarious liability for those who deploy them, and the capacity to enter and enforce contracts can all promote alignment and accountability. 

    Across all of these domains, Christopher argues that the legal system should tailor a nonhuman entity's status to the aims of justice rather than defaulting to the rigid binaries of person/property or human/nonhuman. How well the law manages that will be among the most consequential legal issues of the future.



IN THE MEDIA

QUOTED IN






INTERVIEWS




Christopher joins host June Grasso of Bloomberg Law to discuss a breakthrough New York ruling, Deblase v. Hill, recognizing a dog as immediate family.

Listen on YouTube.
“It seems quite at odds with justice, with fairness, with equity--with all the principles we care about in the legal profesion--to rigidly apply the traditional rule that you're limited to economic damages for the loss of a companion animal.”


Christopher talks with Mariann Sullivan from Our Hen House's Animal Law Podcast about the landmark decision in DeBlase v. Hill and the bigger issue underneath it: who is really the activist when courts categorically refuse to develop the common law in accord with evolving norms?

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the Our Hen House website. 
Courts don’t just have the authority, they have a responsibility to advance animal legal status through the common law.


Christopher talks with Kate Galli from the Healthification podcast about the  legal theory he developed and deployed in Approximately 2,000 Beagle Dogs and Puppies v. Ridglanj Farms, the first case in the United States arguing that protection under a state’s anti-cruelty law should be treated as a legal right belonging to animals. 

 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the Strong Body | Green Planet website. 
The problem in our court system is inertia. A sense of propriety that courts shouldn't make changes, even when the change is necessary and justified.


Christopher Berry and Ariel Flint join The Other Animals to explain how Colombia’s cocaine hippos became the first animals recognized as legal persons in the United States, and why the narrow discovery ruling is the ignition of something larger.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
"It's absurd the way things have been . . . that as a society we would pass an animal cruelty law where we say we don't want animals to be tortured or neglected or abused or killed without a good reason. But there's no way to enforce that on behalf of an animal."


Christopher talks with ICARE's Litigating and Legislating for Animal Rights seminar series about the judicial psychology of paradigm shifts: why judges resist recognizing animal rights, how exposure to better arguments can erode that resistance over time, and his concept of ‘shadow personhood’, i.e. the ways courts already treat animals as legal persons without recognizing it.

Watch on YouTube.
“We're already underoing a paradign shift. I call it 'shadow personhood.' These are the ways courts already treat animals like legal persons and just refuse to say it.”






CV


Professional
Nonhuman Rights Project
Executive Director
2024–present

Chief Programs Officer
2024

Animal Legal Defense Fund
Managing Attorney
2020–2024

Senior Staff Attorney
2018–2020

Staff Attorney
2014–2018

Litigation Fellow
2011–2014


Education
University of Michigan Law School
J.D., 2011

University of South Dakota
B.S., Political Science, 2008


Bar Admissions
State of California, Bar No. 283987

United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit

United States Court of Appeal for the Seventh Circuit

United States District Court for the Northern District of California 

United States District Court for the Eastern District of California 

United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin 

United States District Court for the District of Columbia


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Christopher is located in and licensed to practice law in California. He is not taking on legal clients but welcomes professional connection. Nothing in this website should be construed as legal advice or as creating an attorney-client relationship.