ABSTRACT
This Article argues that doctrinal coherence and moral integrity demand the extension of Stand Your Ground statutes with immunity provisions (‘SYGI’ laws) to individuals confronted with ambiguous, yet potentially dangerous, canine encounters in public spaces. It also introduces a theoretically ambitious redeployment of assumption of the risk – not as a traditional, post hoc allocative tort defense, but as a forward-looking, predictive doctrine for assigning legal responsibility in human-animal encounters, particularly within the context of public-space accountability – even in jurisdictions without SYGI laws. The analysis begins with an inquiry into what dogs are: autonomous, mobile, sentient actors simultaneously capable of inflicting sudden and lethal violence, yet consistently romanticized in both law and culture as benign property or familial extensions. It then interrogates what dogs are not: they are not people, nor human-equivalent rights-bearing beings. Drawing on phylogenetics and taxonomic reasoning, this Article deconstructs these romanticized legal and cultural ideals by situating dogs within their evolutionary lineage as domesticated predators, thereby challenging the legal fiction of canine harmlessness. Situated within this taxonomy, the Article contends that those who introduce animals with lethal capacity into shared civic spaces should presumptively bear the legal risk of injury to the animal when human actors respond defensively under conditions of fear and temporal constraint. In critiquing the anthropomorphic distortions that infect legal reasoning, the Article ultimately argues that the refusal to treat ambiguous canine threats as legitimate triggers for self-defense immunity reflects a jurisprudence more committed to utopian fantasies of canine innocence than protecting actual human lives.
Bahadur, Rory D, The No Bite Rule (Early Draft) (July 1, 2025). Forthcoming Drake Law Review.
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