This chapter engages in a comparative examination of cause lawyering in the prisoners’ rights and animal rights movements. Drawing on the rich literature on cause lawyering and social movements, and on American constitutional law, it discusses the similarities and differences in the possibilities for legal advocacy concerning the rights of incarcerated persons and the treatment of non-human animals. The chapter offers a descriptive account of three areas in which these movements might be studied through a comparative lens – countering invisibility; facilitating moral suasion; and overcoming disenfranchisement. The chapter suggests that these comparisons might lead public interest lawyers working in these respective spaces to share ideas about strategic approaches and potential similarities that might be employed to overcome common barriers to progress. It also explains that this typological model for comparing cause lawyering might be employed by scholars in examining relationships between and among other social movements.

Prison standards are an important element of transnational criminal justice. This chapter shows how legal standards governing prison conditions emerged at the international and regional levels and considers how, increasingly, they have gained legitimacy. It then describes how these standards are applied in a way that contributes to a recognizable transnational legal order in respect of prison conditions, which has real impact at the national level. The chapter pays close attention to the transfer of prisoners between states, as a mechanism that operates transnationally and, in the process, enhances the importance of international prison standards. It concludes that the benefits of common prison standards are mixed. On the positive side, they have the potential to give states that are asked to extradite suspects, or transfer sentenced prisoners, leverage to demand the improvement of prison conditions in the receiving states. There is, however, a risk that states will accept and implicitly endorse sub-standard prison conditions in order to rid themselves of troublesome offenders.