Chris Green

Chris Green is the executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a role he assumed in September 2023. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he previously served as the inaugural executive director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, where he helped launch the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic.

Green is a fourth-generation graduate of the University of Illinois, where he created the school's first Environmental Science degree. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he took the school's first course in Animal Rights Law. As a student, he served as an officer of the HLS Student Animal Legal Defense Fund when the Bob Barker Endowment for the Study of Animal Rights was established. He also spent several decades working in the fine arts, film and music industries.

In 2004, Green wrote "The Future of Veterinary Malpractice Liability in the Care of Companion Animals," which was published in the 10th anniversary issue of the Animal Law Review. That same year he won first prize at the inaugural National Animal Advocacy Competition, an event he later judged for several years. He worked closely with his former Harvard Law School instructor Steven Wise on a pioneering law review article applying habeas corpus to chimpanzees, which helped establish the theoretical underpinnings for the current work of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In 2005, Green helped inaugurate the American Bar Association's TIPS Animal Law Committee, which he went on to chair in 2015.

Green established the Animal Legal Defense Fund's Legislative Affairs Program and served as its director from 2013 to 2015. He then returned to Harvard as the inaugural executive director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program, where he helped launch the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Clinic and grew the program from an initial staff of three to more than 30 faculty, staff, lecturers, scholars, researchers and fellows. He rejoined the Animal Legal Defense Fund as executive director in September 2023.

During his animal law career, Green has helped defeat Ag-Gag legislation in several states, helped pass and defend farmed animal protection ballot measures, directed efforts that led SeaWorld San Diego to halt the breeding and import of new orcas, and persuaded the top three U.S. airlines to stop transporting African hunting trophies. As chair of the TIPS Animal Law Committee, he successfully enacted ABA-wide policy resolutions recommending that all U.S. legislative bodies outlaw the possession of dangerous wild animals. In 2020, to reduce the number of family pets shot by police, he authored and passed another ABA resolution urging that all law enforcement officers receive comprehensive training in non-lethal animal encounters. He had earlier been the executive producer of the 2015 documentary Of Dogs and Men, which focused on that same issue.

Green served on a National Academies of Sciences committee assessing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' use of dogs in biomedical research and helped author the committee's consensus report, which found most of that research to be "unnecessary." The committee's work led the department to stop using dogs in biomedical research. He has served on the board of the National Center for Animal Law, was an advisor to the National Canine Research Council and is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Law Association. He was also a member of the California Veterinary Medical Association's Non-Economic Recovery Task Force and later advised members of the American Veterinary Medical Association's Task Force on the Legal Status of Animals on the same issues at the national level.

In 2022, the American Bar Association honored Green with its award for Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law. He has consulted on animal legal issues for outlets including CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, NPR, POLITICO, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Green lives in Illinois, where he manages a farm that has remained in his family for 186 years.