Vicente de Paula Ataide Jr. Introdução ao direito animal: A teoria das capacidades jurídicas animais

This study investigated and established the specific features of the legal capacity of minors, as well as cases of granting them full civil legal capacity. The purpose of this study was to cover certain features of the implementation and protection of subjective civil rights of minors within their legal capacity, their emancipation and to develop specific proposals for improving the private law regulation of these relations. The study analysed the provisions of the current Ukrainian legislation on the legal regulation of relations on determining the scope of civil legal capacity of minors, as well as the legislative experience of foreign countries, in particular, France, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, etc. The authors of this study concluded that Ukrainian legislation is heterogeneous in nature, as well as that there are different legislative approaches to determining the age of majority of an individual, and to the scope of powers granted to minors. The study examined the foreign experience of legislative provision of minors with the opportunity to dispose of their property in case of their death, as well as the approach of the Ukrainian legislator in terms of governing these legal relations. Based on the analysis of Article 1234 of the Civil Code of Ukraine (hereinafter referred to as “the CCU”), the authors identified specific features of the right to make a will in terms of determining its subjects and concluded on the absence of legislative prohibition of making a will by a minor who has acquired full civil legal capacity in accordance with the procedure established by law. The position of scientists on the need for statutory consolidation of the ability of minors to make a will was supported, but with certain reservations conditioned by the provisions of the current civil legislation; the authors developed specific proposals for amendments to the CCU. It was concluded that a minor receives the status of a fully capable person in two ways – by granting and acquiring. At the same time, the granting of full civil legal capacity is interpreted as the adoption of an appropriate decision by the competent authority (in this case, the guardianship and custodianship authority or the court) provided the availability of grounds stipulated by law. Therewith, the acquisition of full civil legal capacity in the context of Part 2, Article 34 of the CCU is perceived as the result of independent performance of a legal action by a minor (in this case, marriage), which is stipulated by law and entails legal consequences in the form of obtaining full civil legal capacity without additional authorisation from other persons or the state

The article discusses the main problems of the institute of civil emancipation of minors. Emancipation is considered as a basis for minors to acquire full or partial legal capacity by equalizing their civil rights and obligations with adult citizens, unless otherwise provided by law. The need to introduce this institution is determined by the fact that for the citizen to function in society in full, he must have full legal capacity. A minor is completely dependent on the decisions of his legal representatives, he cannot manage his activities and make related decisions on his own. The institution of emancipation is necessary precisely to ensure the independence of a minor in making independent decisions regarding the disposal of his income, concluding large deals, engaging in legal business activities, etc. But the question of the scope of rights granted to an emancipated person still remains open. Analysis of the practice of other countries of the world shows that emancipation as an objective phenomenon of reality represents certain relations between its participants. In many countries, emancipation is not considered a right of a minor, but a privilege granted only to those minors who can demonstrate that they are ready to live in society as adults. In order to acquire legal capacity in the case of emancipation of minors, certain conditions and the performance of a number of other actions are required (for example, minors submit applications (petitions) to declare them capable of legal action, present the necessary evidence and documents for this, adoption of a decision on emancipation by the relevant body), after which practical fixation and further implementation of the right to acquire civil legal capacity becomes possible. In the United States, emancipation has been established as a privilege, not a right of the minor, and is granted only to those minors who can demonstrate that they are ready to live in society as adults. Withholding emancipation of minors does not fully equate them to adults and fully capable of action, remains in many respects limited, established for minors, which are expressed in the impossibility of exercising some of the emancipated rights, for which the law establishes the achievement of a certain age.

According to the Serbian legal sources it is not clear at what age full legal capacity was assumed. St. Stephen's Charter (1313-1318) says that a widow who has a little boy, should hold the whole village until her son become grown-up. It is clear that the persons under age could not enter formal transactions, but what was the age when natural persons assumed full legal capacity? So-called "Justinian' Law" in article 1 says that the full legal age was assumed at the age of 25. The Syntagma of Matheas Blastares exposes very complicate Byzantine system of three existing ages in the life of natural persons: 1) young persons (mladi) under puberty (14 male 12 female) had no legal capacity and they were under tutorship (pristavnik tutela); 2) individuals who have reached puberty were nevertheless, too young to administer their affairs and they were under cura (pecalovnik, koiratbr, guardianship over minors) until the age of 25, either male or female; 3) a person reached perfecta aetas at the age of 25, at which he had full capacity to act on his own behalf. But, Byzantine law required 4 years more for establishment (ustamenienije) of all legal rights of ex-minor, so the consent of a curator was no more needed at the age of 30. According to the remaining legal sources it is impossible to say whether those Byzantine rules were applied in mediaeval Serbia or whether full legal capacity was assumed at the age of puberty (14 male, 12 female). .

The research object of this paper is the special legal capacity of lawyers, specifically, the special legal capacity for the performance of advocacy activities, regulated by the Law of Advocacy, the special legal capacity for providing notarial services, according to the Law on notaries, and the special legal capacity of the executors, according to the Law on Enforcement. Full legal capacity is the abstract possibility of physical and legal persons to be the provider of rights and obligations. All physical persons have full legal capacity, however, some physical persons, because they fulfill special properties, acquire special legal capacity. The research in this paper has two mail purposes. The first intention is to analyze two assumptions necessary for achieving the special legal skills: 1. professional technical conditions requirements that must be completed by the natural person to operate the professional activities and 2. providing the authorization by the government. The second goal is to show the specifics of the three types of professional activities, notion, acquire, cease and termination. The project will analyze more closely the termination of the special legal capacity because of the loss of one from the two-expectations necessary for its acquisition (obtaining a lawyer's license, terminating the notary or the executor).

Reclaiming nature’s rights

The new approach to legal capacity legislation promoted by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is that all persons with disabilities have full legal capacity on an equal basis with others, but may require support in making certain decisions. Any restrictions on legal capacity must accordingly incorporate safeguards in line with art 12(4) of the Convention, including that the restriction must be tailored to the individual’s circumstances and must be proportional to his or her needs. The South African Law Reform Commission has embarked on law reform in this regard and has recommended the Assisted Decision-making Bill to provide for support measures as an alternative and parallel measure to the current curatorship system. Proportionality is not only a standard of judicial review to ascertain whether a legislative measure justifiably limits the right to equality and legal capacity. It is also a principle that must guide any person that provides support to a person with a disability who cannot make decisions independently to ensure that whatever support is provided to him or her to come to a decision regarding his or her welfare or finances, remains proportional to his or her circumstances and needs. The support must not be overbroad, must not negate the autonomy of the person, and even in hard cases, the will and preferences of the person must be sought. The Assisted Decision-making Bill does not sufficiently incorporate the principle of proportionality and other safeguards and will require revision.

The aim of this paper is to establish the categories of adult persons which could be considered as the subjects incapable of giving consent for the participation in clinical trials – which is the expression used by the legislator that the author considers to be vague. In the first part of the paper, the author analyzes the issue whether the adult persons with restricted or terminated legal capacity belong to this category. The second and the third part of the paper represent a response to the question whether an adult subject with full legal capacity can be classified in this category for a particular reason. In the conclusion, the author states that the category of adult persons which could be considered incapable of giving consent for the participation in clinical trials includes only the individuals without full legal capacity and explains why such categorization is not adequate, suggesting the corrective solutions.

The article examines the legal nature and content of legal subjectivity of international migrants using the cutting-edge methodology of international legal personology. The relevance of the research topic is the need to apply the personology methodology to the study of the personal component of the international legal system, especially in the context of Russian aggression which poses a threat to the lives of Ukrainian refugees. The purpose of the article is to determine the legal nature and content of international migration legal personality of a person using the latest methodology of international legal personology. The methodological basis of the study is an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach which made it possible to formulate the conceptual framework of international migration legal personality of a person with due regard for the modern doctrine and practice of international law. The work uses a number of general theoretical and special scientific methods: objectivity; dialectical; historical and legal; formal and logical; special legal; systemic and structural; comparative legal; sociological; the person-centered method was developed by the author specifically for the study of the problems of the subject of law in general and the subject of international law in particular. It posits that the 1948 mistranslation of the traditional legal concept of “legal personality” (person before the law) as “legal subjectivity” in Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has had negative methodological consequences for domestic studies of personative legal reality. In their research, the scholars typically focused on the legal status, rights and duties of the legal subject rather than legal personality per se. The study of specific qualitative traits of legal personality (such as personative capacity, under the umbrella term of “legal capacity”, or negative capacity, in the narrow framework of criminal capacity) has been fragmentary, sporadic, and categorically vague. Only when legal personology cohered as an academic approach did it became possible to use an adequate person-centric methodology to study the personative element of any legal system. A personological analysis of the traditional concept of “legal capacity” identified three aspects: 1) normative: the capacity of a social actor to bear a legal status, possess rights and duties (normative capacity before the law); 2) personative: the capacity of a social actor to be a subject of law, a legal personality, a bearer of a personative legal form of a physical, legal or sovereign person (personative capacity before the law); 3) communicative: the capacity of a social actor to take part in legal communications, to be a party of legal relations (communicative capacity before the law). Further personological study of international migration law found that a person bears all the features of an international legal personality that possesses the corresponding sectoral personative capacity and active capacity at the universal, regional, and particular level. Meanwhile, a significant number of environmental (climate), anthropogenic and political migrants remain outside the purview of international legal regulation at the universal level, where they are conventionally referred to by the rather restrictive term “refugee”. At the regional and especially at the bilateral level, there is a risk that the generally recognised rights and fundamental freedoms of forced migrants during accelerated readmission, which underscores the necessity of academic scrutiny of this relatively new institution of international migration law.

Examines the existing in Russia ways to protect the rights and legitimate interests of minors in civil and family law. The practice of applying the norms of modern civil and family law when juveniles exercise their property rights is analyzed. We consider the conditions under which the protection if the rights of minors is possible both within the framework of protection and protection of property, inheritance rights of the child, rights to alimony obligations. The rights of the child to the occupied premises are considered. Various interpretations of the legal regime of property acquired for a child are investigated. Measures aimed at exercising proper control over the procedure for spending alimony of parents with whom a minor child lives are determined. The features of the legal regulation of entrepreneurial activity with the participation of minors are examined, and the issues of legal capacity and legal capacity of a minor who is an individual entrepreneur are studied. The problems and controversial moments that arise in practice when carrying out entrepreneurial activities of minors who do not have full legal capacity are identified. Discusses discussion questions regarding the age at which a citizen has the opportunity to conduct business. In this regard, a number of changes and amendments to the legislation are proposed.

The scientific article is devoted to the development and substantiation of logically interrelated theoretical conclusions regarding the procedural status of minors in criminal proceedings, the formulation of recommendations on the basis of them for the improvement of the criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine. The author states that the formation and consolidation of the procedural status depend on a number of factors, among which the age of the person should be highlighted. The influence of this factor on the regulation of the procedural status of minors in criminal proceedings is considered as the main theoretical basis for further research. The scientific work argues that the peculiarities of the implementation of the criminal procedural status of minors are related to the determination of their legal and legal capacity in criminal proceedings. As a general rule, minors are limited in their legal personality. Firstly, they cannot be subjects of a wide range of legal relations, and secondly, in those areas where they act as subjects of legal relations, their legal capacity is limited by law. It is noted that minors who have committed a criminal offense have a limited criminal procedural status in the criminal justice system of Ukraine. The recognition of full or limited legal capacity of minors significantly affects the content of the elements of their procedural position in the criminal process and the relationship with the defender and legal representative. The basis of the structure of the criminal procedural status of minors who have committed a criminal offense will be the corresponding criminal procedural status of an adult suspect, accused, defendant, based on the unity of the nature of participation in the criminal process, with its appropriate adaptation to the psychophysiological characteristics of the minor The author states that in criminal procedural science one can observe a peculiar preference of the interest of researchers in favor of minor accused or suspects. Much more attention is paid to issues of criminal proceedings against minors compared to issues of protecting the rights and interests of minor victims or witnesses. One of the main rules of criminal justice for minors is its maximum individualization. The personality of minors and the reasons for their offenses are at the center of the judicial process, so these features should be studied as much as possible during the investigation. The presented provisions define the place and role of a minor in the criminal process in a new way. Keywords: procedural status; a minor; criminal proceedings; criminal justice; juvenile suspect; a minor accused; a minor witness; minor victim.

The philosophical-legal concepts of "legal possibility" and "legal reality" manifest themselves in specific ways in the existing structures of the functioning of one of the key categories of the general theory of law — legal personality, as well as in its components of legal capacity and legal capacity to act. In the process of identifying these manifestations and analyzing various types of legal possibilities, especially general (abstract) legal possibility, the author places the philosophical-legal category of "possibility" at the core of the concept of "legal personality". From this perspective, separately are considered legal capacity and legal capacity to act as general (abstract) legal possibilities, subjective rights as real legal possibilities, as well as the relationship between these categories is analyzed, highlighting their main differences and the necessity of differentiation. The author also draws special attention to the question of legal capacity (or legal personality) as a general (abstract) legal possibility of legal entities that are subjects of the law. According to the conclusion presented in the article, the analysis of legal personality as a general (abstract) legal possibility has important methodological significance, as it examines and identifies the legal prerequisites that enable a deep understanding of the structure of the effective realization of law and legislation, which is particularly important for lawmaking activities and law implementation practice.

This article examines the evolving legal and ethical debate on granting legal rights and personhood to animals within contemporary jurisprudence. It argues that the traditional classification of animals as property is increasingly incompatible with scientific evidence of animal sentience and with modern theories of justice. Drawing on ethical frameworks such as utilitarianism and deontology, the study analyzes how recognition of animals as rights-bearing beings can challenge anthropocentric legal systems and promote a more inclusive conception of justice. The article further reviews significant constitutional developments and landmark judicial decisions, including the Kaavan case in Pakistan and the Sandra and Cecilia cases in Argentina, to demonstrate the growing international shift toward acknowledging animals as subjects of legal concern rather than mere objects of human use. It highlights the implications of animal personhood for welfare, conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability, while also addressing major objections based on legal capacity, economic disruption, and practical enforcement. The study concludes that recognizing legal rights and limited personhood for animals represents an important step toward interspecies justice, humane governance, and sustainable coexistence.

Legal practice is characterized by cases when legal regulation does not achieve its goals in view of ignoring the claims of legal actors. The article searches for ways to solve this problem. The concepts of legal regulation and legal impact are distinguished in the context of their connection with the mechanism of legal claim and the mechanism of its implementation. The main features of legal regulation of legal claims, which are largely due to the nature of the nature of legal claims, are highlighted. The content of legal claims in this case is the main subject of legal impact, while the object of legal regulation are social relations. Legal regulation of legal claims is carried out indirectly, that is, through the creation, modification or cancellation of the conditions for the recognition of their content as legal. The main legal form of recognition of legal claims is their formal legal recognition by authorized state bodies and officials. The conditions for recognizing legal claims presuppose, first of all, the formalization of a person’s legal qualities - legal capacity and legal active capacity, securing the status of a subject of law for a person. In the next turn, the conditions for the recognition of legal claims, in order to ensure acceptable and the most optimal models of social interaction, provide as one of the tools of legal regulation of the relevant subjective rights and legal obligations. At the same time, the excessive complexity of the procedure for the implementation of legal claims creates conditions for illegal ways to ensure the needs and interests. It underlines the pattern of strengthening the degree of legal influence on a legal actor if the subject of legal regulation and the subject of formal legal recognition of legal claims are united in the person of one state body or official.

The paper deals with the peculiarities of the legal status of minors as participants of entrepreneurial relations. The paper answers the question of the scope of legal capacity of a minor who acts as a sole proprietor. Current legislation provides for being engaged in entrepreneurial activities since 14 years. Carrying out entrepreneurial activities by minors who do not have full legal capacity causes a number of difficulties in practice and is not consistent with its essence. Entrepreneurial activities ought to be carried out only by those underage citizens who have gained full legal capacity. Therefore, the author proposes a number of amendments and additions to the legislation Thus, as the ground for emancipation, Art. 27 of the Civil Code of the RF should contain the requirement of intention to carry out entrepreneurial activity rather than carrying it out in fact. Also, during the research authors came to the conclusion that the involvement of a minor in the activity of a legal person, even if he participates in the work of such a management body as the Board of Directors (Supervisory Board) or the Directorate, shall not be regarded as a kind of entrepreneurial activity and, therefore, to be the ground for emancipation.

Dementia is associated with the gradual impairment of mental ability. The population of people suffering from dementia is as large as 50 million. Most dementia cases result from various neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) linked by a progressive degeneration of neurons. Among NDs, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent cause of dementia and accounts for 60- 80% of cases. Certain pathological changes on the cellular and subcellular level occur even 15 years before the manifestation of clinical symptoms of AD. This first asymptomatic phase of AD is considered a preclinical stage, whereas mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the symptomatic pre-dementia stage. The third, fully symptomatic phase of AD is dementia due to AD. The presence of specific proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) may be considered as a characteristic feature of some NDs. The measurement of their CSF concentrations, together with neuropsychological examination and neuroimaging, may be useful for diagnosing AD. The collection of CSF samples is performed by lumbar puncture, which is a medical procedure that requires obtaining informed consent from patients. While asymptomatic AD patients have full legal capacity, those with dementia require a legal guardian who will represent them. Thus, the objective of this study is to compare the legal systems regulating the legal capacity issue in the USA, U.K. (England and Wales), Germany, and Poland. These countries have been chosen as examples of three different types of legal orders, according to the sources of law, i.e., civil law, common law, and case law.