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.

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"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.”