Woof, Woof, Your Honor

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Some funding for law-school programs has come from Bob Barker, longtime host of The Price Is Right, who says he became interested in animal rights about 25 years ago while serving as the chairman of Be Kind to Animals Week in Los Angeles. This year, he established four separate $1 million endowments for the study of animal law, at Columbia, Duke, Stanford and UCLA. "We love our own animals," Barker says, "but we don't seem to be aware of the mistreatment and exploitation of other animals."

That awareness appears to be growing, however, as more cases of animal cruelty are being prosecuted. According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a 23-year-old nonprofit group, the number of reported cases involving animal abuse, cruelty or neglect nearly tripled from 1996 to 2000. In a more recent case, a woman in Gautier, Miss., called the police on Dec. 4, 2002, when she noticed two Doberman pinschers, one dead and the other emaciated, in a pen in her neighbor's yard. The case went to court the next month, and the dogs' owner, a junior high school teacher, was found guilty of animal cruelty and fined $1,000. Thanks to a rescue group, the surviving Doberman was nursed back to health and placed in a new home. Once weighing less than 30 lbs. and barely able to stand, the dog is now a healthy 67 lbs. She even has a new name: Hope.