Noted animal law attorney, scholar, and professor Delci Winders joined the Lewis & Clark Law School’s Center for Animal Law Studies (CALS) as an assistant clinical professor this past summer.
Winders leads the new Animal Law Litigation Clinic, which focuses on the legal protections and rights of farmed animals. This is the nation’s first such clinic, making Lewis & Clark the first law school in the world to host two separate clinics devoted to animal law. Our other animal law clinic, founded in 2008, focuses on policy.
Winders has practiced animal law for more than a decade and has taught the subject for nearly as long. As vice president and deputy general counsel at the PETA Foundation, Winders led a team of lawyers, veterinarians, and scientists to successfully transfer over a hundred individual animals from appalling conditions to reputable sanctuaries. She recently completed a visiting scholar position at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and was Harvard’s first Animal Law & Policy fellow. Previously, she taught animal law at Tulane University School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
Before her work for the PETA Foundation, Winders served as the director of legal campaigns for Farm Sanctuary, where she developed and led that organization’s legal advocacy efforts. One such effort, a petition for rulemaking on behalf of injured and sick goats, pigs, and sheep at slaughterhouses, was a collaboration with the Lewis & Clark Animal Law Clinic.
She was also involved in ballot initiatives to end intensive confinement systems for farmed animals, and was part of a coalition amicus brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Prior to that, Winders practiced animal law as an associate at Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal, which was named the “most effective public interest law firm” by The Washingtonian.
Winders has published animal law scholarship in top-50 law review journals as well as opinion pieces in national newspapers and magazines. Fittingly, she was featured in O Magazine as one of “Six Women Who Dare.”
