With new developments and applications being announced in rapid succession, the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize the practice of law appears limitless. One such area that has already gained widespread attention is AI, which has made it possible to decode animal speech and talk back to it. Although additional developments would need to be advanced to overcome hurdles around language and cognition, being able to communicate with other species may one day equip animal law advocates to carry out what is arguably the foremost ethical duty of an attorney—that is, to faithfully represent the interests of, in this case, an animal client. In addition to revolutionizing the practice of animal law, the prospect promises to usher animals into the morally relevant category of “legal persons.”
Although AI has driven meaningful gains in our ability to understand animal speech in the present day, scientists have been communicating with other species since the mid-1900s. As has been noted, the fundamental flaw in these early approaches was the focus on teaching animals “to speak like we [humans] do,” as opposed to appreciating the depth and breadth with which species communicate “on their own terms, in their own embodied way, [and] in their own worldview.” Sophie Bushwick, How Scientists Are Using AI to Talk to Animals, Scientific American.
In contrast, today’s approaches have decentered humans by seeking to understand how animals communicate among themselves. With sensors capable of capturing inputs well beyond human perception, current instruments generate vast amounts of data that could not have been processed previously. Armed with AI, scientists are on the brink of being able to reliably communicate with a diverse array of species, from bumble bees to beluga whales and animals of all sizes in between.
Although limitations on interspecies dialogue will necessarily exist across and even within a species based on their cognitive and other capacities, the implications of this emerging landscape for lawyers working to advance the interests of animals through the legal system are numerous and profound. One such implication, if not chief among them, is the prospect of lawyers one day being able to take on animals as clients. While other legal and logistical considerations concerning this prospect undoubtedly exist, skepticism that an attorney can faithfully represent the interests of an animal has, to this point, seen efforts to bring litigation on their behalf shot down.
The judiciary’s skepticism is best exemplified by a ruling handed down by the Oregon Court of Appeals in a 2022 case seeking to resolve whether a horse who had been criminally neglected by his former owner had the right to sue them under a negligence per se cause of action. Just. by & through Mosiman v. Vercher, 321 Or. App. 439, 443 (2022). Substantively, the case concerned whether the horse, named Justice, fell into the class of persons whom the underlying criminal law was intended to protect. Leveraged in support of the case for Justice was a previous Oregon Supreme Court ruling that the state’s anti-cruelty statutes were indeed designed to protect animals, who thus qualified as “victims” under them. Id. at 454. In light of this determination, Justice presumably met all the requisite criteria to permit a negligence per se cause of action to be brought on his behalf.
Yet, in its ruling, the court opted not to address the substantive legal issue. Instead, it asked how a court could be assured that Justice, or any other animal plaintiff, had actually wanted the suit to be brought in the first place. To this end, the court stated, “An animal such as a horse inherently lacks . . . the ability to express its wishes in a manner that the legal system would recognize.” Id. at 446. Going further, the court emphasized that such an incapacity “exists in perpetuity such that it would be difficult to say that a court . . . may actually discern the animal’s own interests in pursuing a legal action.” Id. Although the court noted that it was not unreasonable to assume that an animal who had been made dependent on human care would wish to be cared for, it did not “necessarily follow that a neglected horse would want to achieve that goal by suing his former owner for damages in tort.” Id. at 448. Although the court did not question the attorneys’ motives in the case, it nevertheless questioned how courts could ensure animal advocates were advancing the wishes of their clients as opposed to the institutional agenda of the organization they worked for. Id. at 447–48.
Against the backdrop of the ethical questions around the representation of animals raised by the Justice case, among others, developments in interspecies communication may offer a productive path forward in the years to come. Of course, and as noted earlier, simply being able to communicate with animals, even on their terms, will not necessarily equip an attorney to provide such shows of proof as the law demands. Indeed, some or many species may never be able to provide the informed consent required to be represented as a party to litigation. Of course, only time will tell which species can meet this measure, if any. With that said, interspecies communication may one day bring to light alternative conceptions of what justice entails—not to mention how the law can make an animal victim whole. Driven by advances in AI, such developments alone would prove invaluable for animal law attorneys, whether or not the animals they advocate on behalf of are ultimately their clients.
