Matthew Liebman

Professor Matthew Liebman is the Justice for Animals endowed chair and professor of law at USF School of Law. Professor Liebman is an internationally recognized expert in animal law and has published in leading law reviews on how the legal system can recognize and respect the rights of nonhumans. His writing has appeared in the Maryland Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, the Animal Law Review, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, and the Journal of Animal Law. Professor Liebman is a regular media commentator on animal law issues. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Guardian, and National Geographic.

Before coming to USF, Matthew practiced law for 12 years with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, including three years as the organization’s director of litigation. At ALDF, Professor Liebman litigated a wide variety of animal protection issues, including cases to defend the First Amendment rights of activists and to establish fundamental legal rights for nonhuman animals. Professor Liebman’s practical experience inspires his scholarship, which examines the socio-legal effects of law and litigation in the animal rights movement, as well as various substantive and doctrinal issues in animal law. He also teaches torts and professional responsibility.

• Animal law
• Law & social movements
• Public interest litigation
• Professional responsibility and legal ethics
• Torts

• Program Chair, Justice for Animals Program, School of Law

• Stanford University, JD, 2006 (with distinction)
• University of Texas at Austin, BA in Plan II and Philosophy, 2001 (with highest honors)

• Director of Litigation, Animal Legal Defense Fund
• Clerk, Honorable Warren J. Ferguson, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

• Deborah Rhode Prize, International Association of Legal Ethics (2024)
• The Recorder's List of California Trailblazers (2019)

• Representing Animals, 84 Maryland Law Review 477 (2025)
• Animal Plaintiffs, 108 Minnesota Law Review 1707 (2024)
• Litigation & Liberation, 49 Ecology Law Quarterly 715 (2022)
• Key Animal Law in the United States, in ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF ANIMAL WELFARE (2022)
• Who the Judge Ate for Breakfast: On the Limits of Creativity in Animal Law and the Redeeming Power of Powerlessness, 18 Animal Law 133 (2011).
• A WORLDVIEW OF ANIMAL LAW, Carolina Academic Press (with Bruce Wagman) (2011).