Television personality Bob Barker has donated $1 million to Duke Law School to create the Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law.
The Barker fund will support teaching at Duke Law School in the growing field of animal rights law, including opportunities for students to work for course credit on cases involving compliance with state animal cruelty laws and other forms of animal rights advocacy. North Carolina is the only state that allows individuals and citizens' organizations to seek injunctions against violators of the state's animal cruelty laws.
Barker has advocated against animal cruelty for several decades, and he hopes to encourage a new generation of lawyers, judges and legislators to take up the cause. "Animals need all the protection we can give them," Barker said. "We intend to train a growing number of law students in this area of the law in the hope that they will ultimately lead a national effort to make it illegal to brutalize and exploit these helpless creatures."
Duke Law Professor William A. Reppy Jr., an expert in the field of animal rights law who was instrumental in the passage of the North Carolina standing law, already teaches a course in the area, and will take the lead in enhancing the school's offerings for students in animal rights law and jurisprudence. He hopes to develop a clinic through which students will work with him and other volunteer lawyers who handle animal rights cases in the state. "Mr. Barker's generous gift positions Duke Law School to contribute significantly to this emerging area of animal rights law," said Katharine T. Bartlett, dean of Duke Law School. "It also will help us to offer students hands-on, meaningful practice experience with some novel and interesting cases."
Since 2001, Barker has established similar endowment funds at several law schools in addition to Duke, including Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and UCLA.