Due to the cancellation of classes and activities on campus, this event has been canceled. We hope to reschedule this event at a later time.
The Urban Coast Institute (UCI) will welcome one of the nation’s leading scholars at the intersection of animal and environmental law to Monmouth University on March 25 to deliver the guest lecture “Fish Suffering, Climate Change, and the Public Trust Doctrine.” Pace University Professor David Cassuto’s lecture, the latest installment in the UCI’s Marine Science and Policy Series, will be held from noon to 1 p.m. in Bey Hall’s Turrell Boardroom (201).
The talk is free and students and members of the public are welcome. Pizza and light refreshments will be served.
The following is an abstract for the talk: Fish are sentient — they feel pain and suffer. Yet, while we see increasing interest in protecting birds and mammals in agriculture, precious little attention has been paid to the suffering of fish in the fishing industry. This talk will explore fisheries management practices, the effects of anthropogenic climate change on those practices, the moral implications of fish sentience, and the role of the Public Trust Doctrine in enacting meaningful protections for aquatic animals.
Cassuto recently wrote more on this topic in the Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law.
Cassuto is a professor of law and member of the Global Center for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law, where he also directs the Brazil-American Institute for Law & Environment (BAILE). He is also the Class of 1946 Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at Williams College, a Fulbright Fellow, a visiting professor at law schools in both Brazil and Spain, and the Senior Counsel for International Affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund. He has written extensively on the interweaving of environmental and animal law, as well as the larger legal issues raised by industrial agriculture and the human/animal relationship. He holds a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, a Ph.D. from Indiana University, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. Prior to entering legal academia, he was a Professor of English and founder of the Literature & Environment program at the University of Missouri-Rolla.
For more information on the lecture, please contact Randall Abate, Rechnitz Family/Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy, at rabate@monmouth.edu.