10:15 – 10:30 a.m. PT/1:15 – 1:30 p.m. ET –Break
Looking Ahead: Legal Challenges Facing Animals and the Environment
10:30 – 11:45 a.m. PT / 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. ET
Key court cases and policy shifts are reshaping the legal landscape for environmental and animal protection. With a new presidential administration settling into office comes the potential for rollbacks of legal protections for the environment and animals, including those under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. This panel will examine new regulatory changes that impact the environment and animals, recent litigation at the intersection of climate and animal agriculture, and legal efforts to strengthen environmental regulations for the animal agriculture industry.
Speakers:
Daina Bray, Legal Director, Law Environment & Animals Program, Yale Law School
Daina Bray is a clinical lecturer in law and the legal director of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School, where she leads the Climate Change and Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative. Daina has extensive animal law, international, nonprofit, and litigation practice experience, and a sustained and pragmatic commitment to making a positive difference in the ways that we interact with non-human animals. She previously served as general counsel of the nonprofits Mercy for Animals and the International Fund for Animal Welfare and practiced with major international law firms in the areas of litigation and international arbitration. Daina is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates and a past chair of the ABA International Animal Law Committee, the ABA TIPS Animal Law Committee, and the Tennessee Bar Association Animal Law Section. She is a Director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the International Coalition for Animal Protection, and a member of the Animal Defense Partnership Advisory Council. Daina received a JD from Stanford Law School with pro bono distinction, a BA in international studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar, a Fulbright scholarship for research in environmental education, and the 2021 ABA Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law Award.
Eric Glitzenstein, Director of Litigation, Center for Biological Diversity
Eric Glitzenstein is the Director of Litigation at the Center for Biological Diversity, a national conservation organization dedicated to preventing human-caused extinctions and protecting life on Earth. Mr. Glitzenstein oversees and coordinates the Center’s litigation of cases brought under the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Clean Water Act, and other statutes.
Prior to working with the Center, Mr. Glitzenstein was the co-founder (with Katherine Meyer) and Managing Partner of the D.C.-based firm Meyer & Glitzenstein, one of the nation’s leading public-interest law firms. The firm specialized in the protection of wildlife and captive animals, environmental and natural resource conservation, and open government cases, among other issues.
Prior to co-founding Meyer & Glitzenstein in 1993, Mr. Glitzenstein was a staff attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, working on a wide variety of public-interest issues, including open government, nuclear safety, and environmental and natural resource protection. Mr. Glitzenstein has been a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School and has also taught courses and classes in wildlife, animal, and public interest law at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Cornell, Columbia, American University, and George Washington, among others.
Mr. Glitzenstein is a 1978 graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a 1981 graduate (magna cum laude) of the Georgetown University Law Center. Following graduation from law school, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Thomas Flannery of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Emily Miller, Staff Attorney, Food and Water Watch
Emily Miller is a staff attorney at the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, where she engages in strategic litigation and advocacy to combat the polluting and exploitative impact of industrial animal agriculture. Since joining Food & Water Watch in 2021, Emily primarily focuses on legal strategies to address factory farm air and `pollution harming frontline communities, the environment, and the climate. She received her Juris Doctorate from University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She is based in Colorado.
Moderator: Chris Green, Executive Director, Animal Legal Defense Fund
Chris Green is the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s executive director, assuming the role in September 2023. He rejoins the Animal Legal Defense Fund having established the organization’s Legislative Affairs Program and served as its director from 2013–2015. For the past eight years, Chris has been the inaugural executive director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School — where he helped launch the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic and grew the Program from an initial staff of three to now having over 30 faculty, staff, lecturers, scholars, researchers, and fellows.
During his animal law career, Chris has helped defeat Ag-Gag legislation in several states, helped pass and defend farmed animal protection ballot measures, directed efforts that led SeaWorld San Diego to halt the breeding and import of new orcas, served on a National Academies committee that caused the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs to stop using dogs in biomedical research, and persuaded the top three U.S. airlines to cease transporting African hunting trophies. After a conference in China, Chris also rescued Lily, a terrified Samoyed dog who was about to be slaughtered for food at a back-alley butcher stand, and she subsequently spent her remaining years living happily with his parents in Illinois.
Chris helped inaugurate the American Bar Association’s TIPS Animal Law Committee in 2005 and served as its chair in 2015. In that capacity he successfully enacted ABA-wide policy resolutions recommending that all U.S. legislative bodies outlaw the possession of dangerous wild animals and provide police officers with non-lethal animal encounter training. In 2022, the American Bar Association honored Chris with its award for “Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law.”
Chris’ own academic scholarship has been published in the Animal Law Review, and he has consulted on animal legal issues with dozens of major media outlets.
Chris is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he took the school’s first course in Animal Law, and the University of Illinois, where he created the school’s first Environmental Science degree. He also spent several decades working in the fine arts, film, and music industries — producing documentaries that include Of Dogs and Men, a film about police shooting people’s companion animals. Chris currently resides in Illinois where he still manages a farm that has remained in his family for 186 years.
