Animal Rights Law - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - The Current Legal Status of Animals

Introduction

For supplementary perspectives that view legal animal protection (and animal rights advocacy more generally) through the lens of sociological theory, see Valerio Pocar, ‘Animal Rights: A Socio-Legal Perspective’ (1992) 19 Journal of Law and Society 214, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/1410221 and Joseph H Michalski, ‘Overcoming Sociological Naïveté in the Animal Rights Movement’ (2016) 9 Theory in Action 52, available at https://www.proquest.com/docview/1766813275?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true

The Property Status of Animals

For a description and analysis of the property status of animals, see: David S Favre, ‘The Modification of Property Law’, The Future of Animal Law (Edward Elgar 2021), available at https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781839100628.00007.xml

For a primer on the property status of animals in the United States, including suggestions for reform, see: Catherine L Wolfe, ‘Animals Are Not Property and Should Be Legally Reclassified’ (2012) 1 Mid-Atlantic Journal on Law and Public Policy 148, available at http://midatlanticjournal.blogspot.com/

For an historical account of animals’ property status in the earliest known legal systems or law codes, and the influence of these traditions on the contemporary legal status of animals, see: Steven M Wise, ‘The Legal Thinghood of Nonhuman Animals’ (1996) 23 Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 471, available at https://lira.bc.edu/work/ns/1cb76efd-798e-4685-8ad2-fdd25a81e04a

For analyses of how animals are becoming more than just property in law, see: Eva Bernet Kempers, ‘Neither Persons nor Things: The Changing Status of Animals in Private Law’ (2021) 29 European Review of Private Law 39, available at https://kluwerlawonline.com/journalarticle/European+Review+of+Private+Law/29.1/ERPL2021003; D Rook, ‘Who Gets Charlie? The Emergence of Pet Custody Disputes in Family Law: Adapting Theoretical Tools from Child Law’ (2014) 28 International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 177, available at https://academic.oup.com/lawfam/article/28/2/177/1019735

Legislation Protecting Animals

For discussions of the historical development of animal protection laws, see: David S Favre, ‘The Arc of History: Anti-Cruelty, Animal Welfare, and Animal Rights’, The Future of Animal Law (Edward Elgar 2021), available at https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781839100628.00006.xml; Philip Jamieson, ‘Duty and the Beast: The Movement in Reform of Animal Welfare Law’ (1991) 16 University of Queensland Law Journal 238, available at https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/agispt.19922350

For accounts of animal welfare science and how that science influences animal protection legislation, see: David Fraser, ‘Animal Welfare and the Intensification of Animal Production’ in Paul B Thompson (ed), The ethics of intensification: agricultural development and cultural change (Springer 2009), available at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4020-8722-6_12.pdf; Donald M Broom, ‘Animal Welfare and Legislation’ in Frans JM Smulders and Bo Algers (eds), Welfare of Production Animals Assessment and Management of Risks (Wageningen Academic Publishers 2009) ; DJ Mellor and J Webster, ‘Development of Animal Welfare Understanding Drives Change in Minimum Welfare Standards’ (2014) 33 Revue Scientifique et Technique de l’OIE 121, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25000784/

For a critique of animal welfare science as embodying classic welfarist assumptions, see: Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, ‘Animal Welfare Cannot Adequately Protect Nonhuman Animals: The Need for a Science of Animal Well-Being’ (2016) 1 Animal Sentience, available at https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss7/2

For a cross-cultural survey of conceptions of animal welfare, see E Szűcs and others, ‘Animal Welfare in Different Human Cultures, Traditions and Religious Faiths’ (2012) 25 Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences 1499, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4093044/

For a consideration of some of the problems with animal welfare standards in animal protection legislation, focusing on Australia and New Zealand, see: Steven White and Arnja Dale, ‘Codifying Animal Welfare Standards: Foundations for Better Animal Protection or Merely a Facade?’ in Peter Sankoff, Steven White and Celeste Black (eds), Animal law in Australasia: continuing the dialogue (2. ed, Federation Press 2013), available at https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/handle/10072/56762

For an historical analysis of the political context in which early (nineteenth century) animal protection laws developed in Britain, see: Jane Spencer, ‘The Rights of Beasts in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Writing About Animals in the Age of Revolution (Oxford University Press 2020), available at https://academic.oup.com/book/33786/chapter-abstract/288548530?redirectedFrom=fulltext

For an analysis of exemptions for standard farming practices in the United States, see: David J Wolfson, ‘Beyond the Law: Agribusiness and the Systemic Abuse of Animals Raised for Food or Food Production’ (1996) 2 Animal Law 123, available at https://www.animallaw.info/article/beyond-law-agribusiness-and-systemic-abuse-animals-raised-food-or-food-production

For an argument that exclusions and exemptions do not necessarily make animal protection legislation ineffective, focusing on the United States, see: Cheryl L Leahy, ‘Large-Scale Farmed Animal Abuse and Neglect: Law and Its Enforcement’ (2011) 4 Journal of Animal Law & Ethics 63, available at https://kipdf.com/2014-article-large-scale-farmed-animal-abuse-and-neglect-law-and-its-enforcement_5ae5424c7f8b9acc4e8b45e8.html

For an argument that animal protection legislation can be interpreted expansively, focusing on the underlying legal principles, see: Darren Calley, ‘Developing a Common Law of Animal Welfare: Offences against Animals and Offences against Persons Compared’ (2011) 55 Crime, law, and social change 421, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9295-4

Constitutional Law

For a critical survey of constitutional animal protection provisions in Switzerland, Germany, Brazil, and India, see: Maneesha Deckha, ‘Constitutional Protections for Animals’ in Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor (eds), Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (Routledge 2020), available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781000046847

For detailed analysis of animal protection as a constitutional state objective, see: Elien Verniers, ‘The Impact of Including Animals in the Constitution – Lessons Learned from the German Animal Welfare State Objective’ (2020) 8 Global Journal of Animal Law 1, available at https://ojs.abo.fi/ojs/index.php/gjal/article/view/1691; Elien Verniers, ‘Animal Constitutionalism: Paving the Way for Animal Inclusion in the Belgian Constitution’ (2022) 10 Global Journal of Animal Law 1, available at https://ojs.abo.fi/ojs/index.php/gjal/article/view/1759; Janneke Vink, ‘Enfranchising Animals in Legal Institutions: Constitutional State Objective’, The Open Society and Its animals (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-41924-0

For analysis of constitutional animal protection in Brazil, see: Tagore Trajano de Almeida Silva, ‘The Constitutional Defense of Animals in Brazil’ in Deborah Cao and Steven White (eds), Animal Law and Welfare - International Perspectives (Springer 2016), available at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-26818-7_9; in Switzerland: Margot Michel and Eveline Schneider Kayasseh, ‘The Legal Situation of Animals in Switzerland: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back – Many Steps to Go’ (2011) VII Journal of Animal Law 1, available at https://www.afgoetschel.com/de/downloads/legal-situation-of-animals-in-switzerland.pdf

On the application of the rule of law to animal protection, see: John Adenitire, ‘The Rule of Law for All Sentient Animals’ (2022) 35 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 1, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-jurisprudence/article/abs/rule-of-law-for-all-sentient-animals/16BE0A2D5533B346551F5606E3484FB2; Maneesha Deckha, ‘Initiating a Non-Anthropocentric Jurisprudence: The Rule of Law and Animal Vulnerability Under a Property Paradigm’ (2013) 50 Alberta Law Review 783, available at https://albertalawreview.com/index.php/ALR/article/view/76; MB Rodriguez Ferrere, ‘Animal Welfare Underenforcement as a Rule of Law Problem’ (2022) 12 Animals 1, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35681875/

For background on the rights of nature as a jurisprudential theory and doctrinal (constitutional) legal development, see: Louis J Kotzé and Paola Villavicencio Calzadilla, ‘Somewhere between Rhetoric and Reality: Environmental Constitutionalism and the Rights of Nature in Ecuador’ (2017) 6 Transnational Environmental Law 1, available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S2047102517000061.
For links between the rights of nature and animal protection, see: Kristen Stilt, ‘Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals’ (2021) 134 Harvard Law Review Forum 276, available at https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/03/rights-of-nature-rights-of-animals/

For arguments that constitutional texts in South Africa and the United States can be interpreted as applying to animals, see: David Bilchitz, ‘Does Transformative Constitutionalism Require the Recognition of Animal Rights?’ (2010) 25 Southern African Public Law 1, available at https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC153243; Pat Andriola, ‘Equal Protection for Animals’ (2016) 6 Environmental and Earth Law Journal 50, available at https://lawpublications.barry.edu/ejejj/vol6/iss1/2/

International Law

The text of the International Convention for the Protection of Animals can be accessed here: https://www.animallaw.info/treaty/international-convention-protection-animals

For an analysis of the legal status of animals under EU law, see: Katy Sowery, ‘Sentient Beings and Tradable Products: The Curious Constitutional Status of Animals under Union Law’ (2018) 55 Common Market Law Review 55-99, available at https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3033039/

For a general introduction to animal protection in international law, see: David S Favre, ‘Animals in International Law’, The Future of Animal Law (Edward Elgar 2021), available at https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-future-of-animal-law-9781839100628.html. For more detailed discussions, see: Anne Peters, ‘Towards International Animal Rights’, Animals in International Law (Brill Nijhoff 2021), available at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466258_009; Caley Otter, Siobhan O’Sullivan and Sandy Ross, ‘Laying the Foundations for an International Animal Protection Regime’ (2012) 2 Journal of Animal Ethics 53, available at https://doi.org/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0053

For an analysis of whether animals could qualify as victims before the International Criminal Court, see: Marina Lostal, ‘De-Objectifying Animals: Could They Qualify as Victims before the International Criminal Court?’ (2021) 19 Journal of International Criminal Justice 583, available at https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/19/3/583/6356124

Animal Protection Laws in Practice

For a discussion of factors that cause under-enforcement of animal protection law in Australia, see: Rochelle Morton, Michelle L Hebart and Alexandra L Whittaker, ‘Explaining the Gap Between the Ambitious Goals and Practical Reality of Animal Welfare Law Enforcement: A Review of the Enforcement Gap in Australia’ (2020) 10 Animals 482, available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32183062/

For applications of the theory of regulatory capture (in which enforcement bodies act in the interests of the entity they are charged with regulating) to animal protection laws, see: Danielle Duffield, ‘Reputation, Regulatory Capture, and Reform: The Case of New Zealand’s Bobby Calves’ (2020) 26 Animal Law 321, available at https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/32205-26-2-duffieldpdf; Jed Goodfellow, ‘Regulatory Capture and the Welfare of Farm Animals in Australia’ in Deborah Cao and Steven White (eds), Animal Law and Welfare - International Perspectives, vol 53 (Springer 2016), available at http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-26818-7_10

For a detailed analysis of the benefits and detriments of private enforcement, focusing on Martin’s Act, see: Jerry L Anderson, ‘The Origins and Efficacy of Private Enforcement of Animal Cruelty Law in Britain’ (2012) 17 Drake Journal of Agricultural Law 263, available at https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2016/09/agVol17No2-Anderson.pdf

Conclusion

For a consideration of how animals’ legal status is changing, in particular as constitutional subjects in several jurisdictions, see: Jessica Eisen, ‘Animals in the Constitutional State’ (2017) 15 International Journal of Constitutional Law 909, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/mox088

For a summary of animal protection legislation in several regions, see: Neil Trent and others, ‘International Animal Law, with a Concentration on Latin America, Asia, and Africa’ in Deborah J Salem, Andrew N Rowan and Humane Society of the United States (eds), The State of the Animals III, 2005 (Humane Society Press 2005), available at https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/humspre/3/ and Sandra Duarte Cardoso and others, ‘History and Evolution of the European Legislation on Welfare and Protection of Companion Animals’ (2017) 19 Journal of Veterinary Behavior 64, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2017.01.006

For general observations by an animal law practitioner about the starkly different way that law treats animals and humans, see: David Thomas, ‘Improving the Law for Animals: A Campaigning Lawyer’s Perspective’ (2022) 43 Liverpool Law Review 107, available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10991-022-09293-8