Angela Fernandez

Angela Fernandez is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto with a cross-appointment in the Department of History. Her research focuses on a particular style of legal history called "legal archaeology," including a book-length study on an (in)famous first possession property case involving a fox: Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Professor Fernandez is very interested in animals and the law. She is a member of the Scholars Committee of the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law & Policy and the collaborative research network BASAN (Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network). She sits on the Board of Advisors and is a Director of Animal Justice Canada. She is also a fellow with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

In addition to "Animals and the Law" (taught in the Fall of 2021 and 2022) and her legal history seminar ("Legal Archaeology: Studies of Cases in Context"), Professor Fernandez teaches Contracts. She is also the Chair of the Directed Research Program and is interested in supervising students on animal law and legal history topics. 

Professor Fernandez is the inaugural scholar in the "Brooks U" series, "Fundamentals of Animal Law," where you can find a copy of her paper "Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person" and an accompanying video. She can also be seen speaking about this topic at a public lecture at New York University, Yale Law School's Law, Ethics and Animals Program (LEAP), and the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law series Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy. All videos are available on the Faculty of Law Youtube Animal Law Playlist.