The Lawyer as Healer for All Beings: Animal Rights, Mediation, and the Expansion of Justice

What if the future of law is not only about resolving disputes between people, but about learning how to live well with all living beings?

For centuries, the law has focused primarily on regulating relationships between human beings. We have developed sophisticated legal systems to protect property, enforce contracts, resolve disputes and vindicate rights. Yet as our understanding of the cognitive, emotional and social lives of animals continues to deepen, a new question emerges: should our vision of justice expand beyond the human community?

Beyond being a legal question, it is a question of how we choose to be in the world.

In I and Thou, the philosopher Martin Buber distinguished between two ways of encountering another. In an I-It relationship, we experience the other as an object, something to use, classify or manage. In an I-Thou relationship, we encounter another as a being worthy of presence, respect and genuine relationship.

Although Buber did not write a philosophy of animal law, his work invites us to ask whether our way of relating to animals might also be transformed. What changes when we cease seeing animals merely as resources, commodities or property, and begin recognising them as fellow creatures with lives that matter in their own right?

The theologian Andrew Linzey has spent much of his life's work exploring precisely this question. He argues that our treatment of animals is not simply a matter of kindness or personal preference. It is a matter of justice. Those who possess the greatest power bear the greatest responsibility to protect the vulnerable. This principle is familiar to every lawyer. It lies behind much of our legal tradition and resonates deeply with the ancient understanding of law as a vocation ordered towards the protection of those who cannot protect themselves.

For lawyers and mediators, this perspective invites a profound shift in identity.

The lawyer as healer seeks not merely to win cases but to contribute to a society in which relationships are restored, harm is reduced and dignity is protected. The mediator embraces the same calling by creating spaces in which conflict can be transformed rather than merely decided.

That vocation does not end at the boundaries of our own species.

Around the world, communities are grappling with increasingly complex questions involving wildlife conservation, companion animals, farming practices, biodiversity, urban development and the protection of vulnerable ecosystems. These are rarely disputes that can be solved through rights alone. They require careful listening, moral imagination and the ability to hold competing values with wisdom and humility.

This is where mediation has an extraordinary contribution to make.

Mediation asks different questions from litigation. Instead of asking only, "Who is legally entitled to prevail?", it also asks, "How can we reduce harm? How can we preserve relationships? How can we create outcomes that allow the greatest possible flourishing for all who are affected?"

These questions invite us into what I have come to describe as the sacred middle, the place where we resist simplistic, either-or thinking and remain present to the complexity of human

and ecological relationships. It is here that creativity emerges, new possibilities are discovered, and solutions can be crafted that honour both justice and compassion.

The future of law may therefore depend not only upon becoming more efficient or more technologically advanced. It may depend upon becoming more relational.

To be a lawyer as healer is to recognise that justice is never merely about rules. It is about relationships.

To be a mediator is to help restore those relationships where they have fractured.

And perhaps the next great chapter in the evolution of law is to recognise that our circle of care extends beyond humanity itself. The measure of a just society may ultimately be found not only in how well it protects the powerful, but in how faithfully it safeguards the most vulnerable, human and non-human alike.

If the law is to become an instrument of healing, then perhaps it is time for lawyers and mediators alike to embrace a larger calling: not simply to resolve conflict, but to participate in the flourishing of all beings.

Sheena Jonker

Email: sheena@adr-networksa.co.za (to add your thoughts or for speaking engagements or to hire me as a mediator)

To find a mediator or join our panel: Panel@adr-networksa.co.za

For training including animal rights training: training@adr-networksa.co.za