The weird and wonderful world of animals and the law

Law Rare Books lecture 19 September 2023

This year, I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be giving the Law Rare Books lecture at Melbourne Law School, talking about my book co-authored with Professor Jeremy Gans: Guilty Pigs: the weird and wonderful world of animal law (2022, Latrobe University Press).

The official Melbourne Law School promotional site is here and the Eventbrite site is here. It’s open to the general public and there’s no cost to register or attend.

How did an academic whose specialty is contract remedies come to co-write a book on animal law for a non-legal audience? Well, you’ll have to come along to get the full story. Suffice to say that I’m curious about just about everything, and there’s no end to the things I’ll investigate, up to and including murder trials for medieval pigs, Biblical stipulations about goring oxen, Irish medieval bee law, and which swans, precisely, the Monarch of England and Wales owns. I have some theories on how and why those pig trials arose in that area of France at that particular time, too.

If you’re in Melbourne, please do come along. I believe the event will be filmed so even if you can’t come, there may be a video I can share afterwards.

I’m so grateful to Carole Hinchcliff, our head Law Librarian, for inviting me to give this lecture.