Enforcing Sympathy: Animal Cruelty Doctrine after the Civil War

Abstract

After the United States Civil War, many states enacted laws expanding protections for animals against cruelty. This article examines the case law relating to animal cruelty in the nineteenth century, and traces how judges interpreted the animal cruelty statutes enacted after the Civil War. It provides a lens on a transformative moment when legislatures and courts recognized the suffering of animals as a distinct harm and criminalized the infliction of pain. A powerful apparatus of policing emerged to enforce this modern sensibility of sympathy. As observed in judicial decisions, the statutes repudiated earlier intent requirements, reached animal owners and conduct on private property, and in several states expanded police powers to allow warrantless arrests to protect suffering animals. The question of whether animals needlessly suffered took precedence over the earlier focus on suppressing public nuisances and common law doctrines of privacy. The animal cruelty movement provides an essential window into humanitarianism of the late nineteenth century.