An Analysis of the Legal Classification of Animals: Toward a Step-wise Deconstruction of the Property Status of Animals
Ernest Waintraub

...This property classification originates from our common law, which in turn derives from ancient laws and philosophies whose foundations have long since been discredited by scientific and moral progress.  Science has shown that animal physiology and psychology is so similar to that of humans that any difference in interest must be one of degree and not kind.  Moral tenets dictate that competing interests should be analyzed according to the principle of equal consideration so ... More...

NEJM, Drug Companies, and the FDA: The Conflict Underlying Levine v. Wyeth

Charlene L. Smith

“Nothing new under the sun.” Product manufacturers, drug companies, and even tug boat owners want to set their own standards when it comes to the products they make or the work they do. Additionally, they want those standards to protect them from tort liability. Even in the 1930’s, a tug boat company tried to argue that the custom of the industry at that time should protect them from liability. Most tug boats did not have radios on board to warn them of imminent storms... More...

Law and Biology
Morris B. Hoffman

Ten years ago E.O. Wilson, the Harvard entomologist, wrote a remarkably ambitious book called Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, in which he predicted that the ever-accelerating insights of evolutionary biology would drive a fundamental convergence of the social and natural sciences. [1] This essay is considerably less ambitious. I’d like to report on the rather remarkable inroads into the law, and into the legal academy, made by post-Darwinian evolutionary thinking—thinking that is itself deeply resonant with the now well-entrenched law and economics movement. [2] This resonance is beginning to shed light on the mysteries of human behavior, and therefore on the mysteries of human institutions, including law. ... More...