[5] Francione has been a professor at Rutgers since at least 1995, when The New York Times reported that the Rutgers' Animal Rights Law Center, the only one in the United States, was receiving 200 calls a week, and that Francione was losing "well over half the lawsuits the clinic brings", as they were taking a strict abolitionist approach.

[6] Francione is known for his work on animal rights theory, and in 1989, was the first academic to teach it in an American law school.

He argues that we could choose to provide some greater measure of protection to animals even if they were to remain our property, but only up until the point where it becomes too costly for us to continue.

A central tenet of Francione's philosophy is that the most important form of incremental change within the abolitionist framework is veganism.

He rejects the position that animals have to have humanlike cognitive characteristics, such as reflective self-awareness, language ability, or preference autonomy in order to have the right not to be used by humans as resources.

Francione points to the fact that many of us even live with nonhuman companions whom we regard as members of our families and whose personhood—their status as beings with intrinsic moral value—we do not doubt for a second.

On the other hand, because animals are property, they remain things that have no value other than what we choose to accord them and whose interests we protect only when it provides a benefit—usually economic—to do so.

[13] His wife, Anna E. Charlton, is an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University, is active in the same field, and has co-authored several publications with Francione.

[6] In 2015, Gary Francione was involved in a multimillion-dollar tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

[14] As of 2017[update], he lives with six dogs, calling them "non-human refugees" who share his home—four suffered cruelty at the hands of past owners.