Annual Lecture
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law organises an Annual Animal Rights Law Lecture held at Cambridge University. Our Annual Lectures are delivered by distinguished practitioners in fields connected to the study of animals, animal welfare, and animal rights law. The Annual Lectures are designed to educate and inspire discussion around the lecturer’s chosen topic.
Join us for our 2025 Annual Lecture
Our third Annual Lecture will be delivered by Cass R. Sunstein (Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard Law School) on 15 October 2025 at the Cambridge Law Faculty.
Cass R. Sunstein is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, and he is the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations, and written many articles and books, including Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter. Sunstein’s lecture is titled ‘Beyond Kant and Bentham: A Bill of Rights for Nonhuman Animals’.
Doors to this event will open at 4pm and the lecture will be held between 4.30-6pm. It will be followed by a drinks reception from 6-7pm.
Book your free tickets today on our EventBrite page.
Past Annual Lectures
Our second Annual Lecture was delivered in June 2024 by Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Singer’s lecture addressed the need for further progress in ethics and law regarding animals, and the prospects of achieving it. A recording of the lecture is available for free on Youtube.
Often described as the world’s most influential philosopher, Professor Singer became well-known internationally after the publication of his ground-breaking book Animal Liberation in 1975, which has been described as one of the most important books of the last 100 years. In 2023, he published the fully rewritten and updated Animal Liberation Now.
Professor Singer’s other books include: Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, Pushing Time Away, The Life You Can Save, The Point of View of the Universe (co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek), Ethics in the Real World, and The Buddhist and the Ethicist (co-authored with Shih Chao-Hwei).
In 2005, Professor Singer was in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. In 2012, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the nation’s highest civic honour. He founded the charity The Life You Can Save and is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. In 2021, he was awarded the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and in 2023, he shared, with Steven Pinker, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Learn more at https://www.petersinger.info/. Photo courtesy of Aletta Vaandering.
Our first Annual Lecture was given in March 2023 by Professor Frans de Waal on Animal Emotions and Animal Rights Law.
The lecture was recorded and is available to watch for free on YouTube. To the right is a subtitled clip from the event.
Professor Frans de Waal is a Dutch/American biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behaviour and social intelligence of primates. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982), compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimpanzees involved in power struggles with that of human politicians. His scientific work has been published in hundreds of technical articles in journals such as Science, Nature, Scientific American, and outlets specialized in animal behaviour. His popular books - translated into 20+ languages - have made him one of the world's most visible primatologists. His latest books are Mama’s Last Hug (Norton, 2019) and Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). De Waal is C. H. Candler Professor Emeritus at Emory University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Utrecht University. He has been elected to the (US) National Academy of Sciences as well as the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, Time declared him one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People Today.
De Waal’s lecture theme was emotions in animals, where increasing understanding provides further evidence for the concept that animals and humans are on a single continuum, and therefore supports the proposition that many of the fundamental legal distinctions between animals and humans need to be rethought.
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law is a UK-registered educational charity. The Annual Animal Rights Law Lecture is generously sponsored by the Jeremy Coller Foundation.