Animal Law Research Articles

ABATE HALAL E KOSHER E BEM-ESTAR ANIMAL

Objetiva-se discutir o bem-estar animal diante do abate religioso. Hodiernamente, o Direito Animal faz-se crescente e pois, ordena um repensar científico, ético e legal no tratamento dos animais não humanos. E, ainda que exista uma norma cultural de animais usados para alimentação, termos como dignidade, senciência e bem-estar animal afloram principalmente no momento do abate. Neste universo, o recorte do abate religioso para produção de carne Halal e Kosher surge com especial interesse. Assim, a partir de profícua literatura, alcança-se tema controverso que envolve não apenas questões científicas e éticas, mas principalmente dogmas religiosos. Optou-se todavia, por priorizar o Direito Animal. Não se adentrou em altercações sobre abolicionismo e veganismo. Diante do estado atual das coisas que legaliza a produção de proteína animal, infere-se a incompatibilidade ética, científica e legal da garantia do bem-estar animal em face do apregoado abate humanitário. E, mais especificamente a jugulação cruenta executa a nos abates Halal e Kosher, em que pese práticas milenares, recrudesce intercorrências que desequilibram o bem-estar animal.

Indigenising Animal Rights Beyond Judicial Rhetoric

This paper intends to provide a detailed overview of how modern Indian jurisprudence, reflected not only by the courts but also parliamentary legislation, imagines the domain of animal laws in India. In a field riddled by inconsistencies, one particularly vexed factor remains, of course, the status of the cow, not only as an animal but also as a broader cultural and political symbol. Navigating these dichotomies conceptually, therefore, is crucial to unravelling the Indian debate on animal law. In our view, the Indian position today represents a form of ‘compassionate escapism’ which allows judges to address specific cases of animal cruelty before them, yet at each stage sidestepping important constitutional questions including the meaning of ‘right to life’ in the animal context, its reconciliation with the PCA 1960 and the socio-cultural significance of animals in India. However, with every such judicial intervention, the courts have created more questions than they have resolved. Given the fairly untested waters of constructing an Indian contextualised animal law jurisprudence, this paper is an attempt not to substantively propose but to roadmap the most crucial issues which require debate and intervention.

Sedating a horse for the purpose of film production

![Graphic][1] Manuel Magalhaes-Sant’Ana is a European specialist in animal welfare science, ethics and law. He received his DVM in 2001 from the University of Porto, Portugal, his MSc in bioethics...

Secondary Victimization of Animals in Criminal Procedure: Lessons from Switzerland

Abstract Switzerland is internationally known for its progressive animal laws and for its innovative tools in law enforcement. In 1992, the Canton of Zurich introduced a public lawyer vested with the task of representing animals’ interests in criminal procedure, known as the Animal Protection Lawyer (APL). The APL had the power to access information about court proceedings, study pending court cases, and intervene on behalf of victim animals. This enforcement tool set a precedent across the world. It amounted to a recognition of animals as de facto victims and created an “equality of arms” for human and animal parties in criminal procedure. In a historic move in 2014, the Zurich parliament removed the APL from office—by mistake, as some maintain. Meanwhile—unnoticed by many—the Canton of Berne maintained a state agency vested with the very same powers as those the APL had, called the Dachverband Berner Tierschutzorganisationen (DBT). Though the DBT operated as an established agency for over 2 decades, in August 2017, a criminal court in Berne denied the DBT standing, arguing that the laws conferring on it the right to represent animals violate the federal law on criminal procedure. In July 2018, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment, and effectively stripped the DBT of its rights to represent animals in criminal proceedings. This article describes these recent shifts in criminal animal law in detail and analyzes the sociopolitical factors that gave rise to them. Special attention is paid to the question of what is left for Switzerland as a role model in animal law given ongoing deregulations, particularly as recent cases in the United States point to an incremental emancipation of animals as victims. The article discusses current alternatives to the APL and the DBT (like public prosecutors, special prosecution sections, and veterinary agencies) and puts their promises under scrutiny. The analysis reveals that these alternatives skirt the main obstacles faced by animals in criminal procedure (issues of representation, expertise in animal law, funding, and competition with other causes) and threaten the democratic will of the Swiss people. Two alternatives are discussed that can help Switzerland overcome its insufficiencies: the organizational right to appeal and victim rights for animals in criminal procedure. Using these alternatives, the article calls for the global emancipation of animals as the proper victims of crimes and for furnishing them with correlating rights to enforcement, including rights to representation.

Best Practice for the Care and Use of Animals in Experimentation: A Malaysian Perspective

Passing federal laws and national guidelines is one of the best revenues to protect animals used in experimentation. The laws can establish standards of care for animals in scientific research such as housing standards and treatment for the animals. At international level, animal ethics and law for the care and use of animal in experimentation have been widely discussed for decades ago. There are several well-known international documents and guidelines that have been referred by many countries when constructing their own federal laws governing the subject matter. They are Terrestrial Code, European Directives, and International Guiding Principles for Biomedical Research Involving Animals. In Malaysia, the Animal Welfare Act 2015 finally has been enforced on 18th July 2017 where the Act among others will regulate the use of animal for scientific purposes in the country. Besides, it will validate the practice of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) which was based on self-regulation before the enactment of the Act and the Act is significant of having legal enforcement in order to give better protection to the animals subjected to experimentation. Thus, the law has taken its role in enhancing the animal ethics for the care and use of animal in science in Malaysia. This paper aims to analyses the provisions of law in several international documents governing the subject matter that reflect the international practice. Then it will look into the practice of research institutions in Malaysia, applying the existing animal ethics and law in the subject matter. This paper adopts doctrinal approach considering primary and secondary sources of law. Relevant to this, Animal Welfare Act 2015 (AWA) and Malaysian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes (My Code) are analysed. Besides, it also employed empirical study by way of interviews and observation. This paper is significant to inform the practice of animal ethics at international level to be learned by Malaysia as the country is still at an early stage of having the new Act.

Explaining the Gap Between the Ambitious Goals and Practical Reality of Animal Welfare Law Enforcement: A Review of the Enforcement Gap in Australia.

Previous research has identified a number of issues arising at all stages of the animal law enforcement process. These issues contribute to an enforcement gap between the written law, as it relates to the penalties laid out in statutes, and the reality of the animal law justice system. This paper identifies and investigates the contributors to this gap. The identified factors discussed are (1) the role of the public in reporting animal cruelty, (2) the ambiguity of the language used in animal welfare legislation, (3) the nature of enforcement authorities, and (4) the role of the courts. Thus, the causes of the enforcement gap are multifactorial, derived from all stages of the enforcement process. Further research on the enforcement model and public education, in addition to debate on legislative reforms, will be needed to address this gap.

Animals and the Impact of Trade Law and Policy: A Global Animal Law Question

AbstractThere is a critical research gap regarding the trade and animal welfare interface: we do not know, empirically, what the impact of trade on animal welfare is. This gap exists, in part, as a result of the paternalism of international trade law and the underdevelopment of global animal law. This article addresses, firstly, the collision of dichotomous trade and animal welfare priorities in legal and political systems. It then explores attempts at reconciliation by the World Trade Organization and the European Union. This involves an investigation of the impact of trade on animal welfare. This impact is categorized into four component parts: (i) open markets, (ii) low animal-welfare havens, (iii) a chilling effect, and (iv) lack of labelling. Case studies from the European Union are examined. Thirdly, the article critiques trade law and policy as ill-suited primary drivers of global governance for animals. Global animal law is identified as a promising alternative, although its early development has been unduly affected by international trade law.

Towards eco-sensocentrism as an ethical position for animal law

Given the immeasurable number of interactions and relations that exist between the animals that inhabit the planet, as well as the large number of species, each with particular needs according to their biological characteristics, it is unfeasible to determine our moral and legal obligations towards nonhumans with universalisms, which is why I propose to take an eco-sensocentric ethic as a basis at the legislative and judicial level, in order to adress the cases in which non-human animals are instrumentalized and exploited for us.

Philosophy of a "Good Death" in Small Animals and Consequences for Euthanasia in Animal Law and Veterinary Practice.

Simple SummaryEuthanasia in veterinary practice is often discussed as one of the profession’s major burdens. At the same time, it is meant to bring relief to terminally ill and/or severely suffering animal patients. This article examines “euthanasia” from a philosophical perspective regarding different definitions and underlying basic assumptions concerning the meaning of death and welfare for nonhuman animals. These theoretical issues will then be discussed in relation to laws and guidelines on euthanasia and practical challenges with end-of-life decisions in small animal practice. Factors which are identified as potential causes of the complex problems regarding euthanasia are as follows: the confusing framework for euthanasia in law and soft regulations; the inclusion of many stakeholders’ perspectives in end-of-life decision-making; potential conflicts between the veterinarians’ personal morality and legal requirements and professional expectations; and, most of all, the veterinarians’ lack of awareness for underlying philosophical assumptions regarding possible understandings of euthanasia. Different practical suggestions are made to clarify and facilitate euthanasia in small animal practice.Moral stress is a major concern in veterinary practice. Often, it is associated with the challenges in end-of-life situations. Euthanasia, however, is also meant to bring relief to animal patients and their owners. The reasons for the moral strain euthanizing animals causes to professional veterinarians need to be further clarified. This article investigates “euthanasia” from a philosophical, legal, and practical perspective. After introducing relevant aspects of euthanasia in small animal practice, the term is analyzed from an ethical point of view. That includes both a broad and a narrow definition of “euthanasia” and underlying assumptions regarding different accounts of animal death and well-being. Then, legal and soft regulations are discussed with regard to the theoretical aspects and practical challenges, also including questions of personal morality. It is argued that the importance of ethical definitions and assumptions concerning euthanasia and their intertwinement with both law and practical challenges should not be neglected. The conclusion is that veterinarians should clarify the reasons for their potential discomfort and that they should be supported by improved decision-making tools, by implementation of theoretical and practical ethics in veterinary education, and by updated animal welfare legislation.

Introduction to animal law: Resources for online research and study

Animal law is the body of statutory and case law governing the treatment of nonhuman animals, including wildlife, companion animals, and animals used for research, entertainment, and food. Emerging rapidly on academic and legal horizons since 2000, entire programs of study at all levels are now dedicated to training students to be effective humane educators, attorneys, law enforcement officers, and citizens.High-profile court cases, such as SeaWorld v. California Coastal Commission, along with the proliferation of animal protection documentaries, such as Blackfish, Earthlings, and Tyke: Elephant Outlaw, have raised profound questions about our treatment of other species. Animal protection is now a mainstream phenomenon, largely due to the Internet and social media providing instant visibility to and awareness of the critical issues of our time.

ANIMAL LAW: ETHICS, SOCIETY AND CONSTITUTIONS

The paper discusses and criticizes views on various aspects of the situations of animals within human societies offered by authors presenting at the seminar held at the Research Centre for Public Policy and Regulatory Governance. They include legal, ethical as well as socio-psychological problems about animal welfare and the attempts to improve the conditions in which animals are treated. The author hints at the theoretical background as well as implications of some of the ideas that are advocated in the ongoing legal and ethical debates over animal welfare. The discussion aims to shed some light on how the cross-disciplinary studies and exchanges that include biologists, psychologists, sociologists as well as legal researchers may contribute to numerous controversies in the contemporary animal law scholarship.

Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

In this essay, I show how developments and achievements in the field of environmental rights and specifically rights of nature can be instructive, intellectually and practically, to the cause of animal protection and animal rights. That instruction includes not only positive examples but also notes of caution, where animal law may face different and more formidable challenges.

Animal Law: Human Duties or Animal Rights?

In my view, the moral case for giving animals legal protection is strong. This is so whether or not we think of animals as having moral rights, such as a right to be cared for, or at least a right not to be harmed, because even if animals do not have moral rights, humans have moral duties toward animals, such as a general duty not to harm animals, say, by performing experiments on them, or raising them for food, or having them perform tricks to amuse tourists. The question I wish to consider in this article, however, is not what moral rights animals have, or even what our moral duties to animals are, but whether we have reason to think of animal law not only as imposing legal duties on humans, but also as conferring legal rights on animals. This is not a moral question, but a question about how to conceptualize legal positions, and the arguments in favor of or against competing conceptualizations should be of a theoretical nature. I shall argue (A) that while there are good moral reasons to impose legal duties on humans regarding the treatment of animals, there are good theoretical reasons not to think of animals as legal right-holders, because doing so would either be pointless, on the interest-theory analysis, or else incoherent, on the will-theory analysis. On route to this conclusion, I shall also argue (B) that in the field of law, the method of explication is in many cases, including the elucidation of the concept of a legal right, preferable to conceptual analysis, strictly conceived; (C) that we should think of legal rights as complexes of Hohfeld-elements (claims, liberties, powers, immunities) and distinguish accordingly between claim-rights, liberty-rights, power-rights, and immunity-rights; (D) that when discussing animal rights we should focus on claim-rights; and, finally, (E) that an explication of the concept of a legal right along the lines of the will-theory of legal rights is preferable to an explication along the lines of the interest-theory.

Direito Animal e Constituição

Brazilian Animal Law, as a new legal branch, was born with the 1988’s Constitution. It is in it that, for the first time, the rule prohibiting cruelty to animals appears. This essay analyzes the constitutional aspects of Animal Law, starting from art. 225 of the Constitution, in particular item VII of its first paragraph. It demonstrates, with support in precedent from the brazilian Supreme Court, that it is from this item that the fundamentals of Animal Law are extracted, which separate it from Environmental Law. It points out that animals are subject to fundamental rights because the Constitution recognizes their intrinsic value and their own dignity and that the cataloging of these rights is already being done, mostly by the state legislation. It indicates that the Paraiba Law and Animal Welfare Code is the first law to list fundamental animal rights. In addition, it indicates, under elaboration based on Marcelo Neves' transconstitutionalist theory, that the application of this Code is transfederative, that is, it can be evoked before other States, or even before the Union, as long as these entities do not legislate on fundamental animal rights. It views animal rights as a fourth dimension of fundamental rights. It also points, with support in the theory of Humberto Avila, that from the same constitutional device from which the rule of prohibition of cruelty is extracted, one can deduce the exclusive legal principles of Animal Law: animal dignity, universality, primacy of natural freedom and animalistic education. It ends by analyzing Constitutional Amendment 96/2017, which introduced the seventh paragraph of art. 225 of the Constitution.

Consciência e senciência como fundamentos do Direito Animal

This essay points to the conscience and sentience of non-human animals as criteria for recognizing their dignity and, consequently, the ownership of fundamental rights, which must be protected in court. Nevertheless, by the precautionary principle, the benefit of the doubt must be granted to those animal species to which Science has not yet been able to elucidate conscience and sentience. Methodologically, an interdisciplinary bibliographic survey was chosen, related to the areas of Law, Philosophy, Veterinary Medicine and Biological Sciences. It is concluded that conscience and sentience are foundations of Animal Law and are implicitly recognized by the brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.

10 (2019) A Commemorative Volume

The dA. Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies) journal celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. We have dedicated volume ten of the journal to the commemoration of an initiative that has profoundly and persistently changed the reader’s perception of other living beings with which we share the world: animals. We are the first journal in our country to deal with the legal treatment of animals from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. Also this year, the journal has reunited experts from various disciplines: jurists, veterinarians, biologists, ethologists, philosophers, journalists and other professionals. They are authors that belong to institutions and countries throughout the world, which adds a pinch of cultural cosmopolitism to the journal.

Review of the Animal Law Conference, Sydney NSW October 2019

Esta es la reseña de la Conferencia sobre Derecho Animal en Sídney, Nueva Gales del Sur (Australia) organizada por el Comité de Jóvenes abogados de Derecho Animal de Sídney.

Divided we stand: How contestation can facilitate institutionalization

AbstractExisting literature on institutionalization highlights that regulatory institutions emerge from resolving disputes, paying little attention to the key behavioral aspect of disputes: contestation. In this paper, I aim to advance the literature by developing a model of contestation‐based institutionalization; contestation facilitates the adoption of new regulatory institutions, laws. Drawing on socio‐legal and network perspectives on the way people argue in a dispute, I focus on a behavioral code of contestation – the shared understanding and expectation about how to argue rather than what to argue. Contestation makes it easier for lawmakers to adopt a new regulatory institution when the lawmakers argue in conformity with the code. Network and event history analyses of animal lawsuits and laws in the United States from 1865 to 2010 confirm this model. This paper highlights the value of looking into the behavioral dimension of disputes and advances our understanding of institutionalization without emphasizing dispute resolution.

The Recognition of Animal Sentience by the Law

Abstract In order to protect nonhuman animals effectively, animal law must overcome many hurdles, be it the balance of human and nonhuman interests, the use paradigm, or narrow definitions of legal personhood or basic rights. A fact often overlooked in this uphill struggle is that the laws of most states recognize that animals must be protected because and to the extent that they are sentient. The legal recognition of animal sentience seems to nullify all and any attempts to deny them legal protection simply because they are not sufficiently appealing, emotionally close, or economically useful to us. However, the legal recognition of animal sentience does not overcome all our cognitive prejudices about animals. Using a comparative law method and insights from moral philosophy, this article analyzes the nature and scope of the legal recognition of animal sentience. It identifies its advantages in challenging arbitrariness and inconsistency and championing intrinsic animal protection and points to the most pressing shortcomings, including some states’ refusal to commit themselves to animal sentience and remaining prejudices in society and science. In concluding, the article offers ways to address and remedy these shortcomings and points to ways in which the concept can be used more effectively by academics and practitioners.

Animal Studies and Ancient Judaism

Animal studies has its origins in philosophy but extends to all fields of the humanities, especially literature, history, and anthropology. The central concern of animal studies is how human beings perceive other species and themselves as one among them. Animal studies in ancient Judaism has generally not been undertaken in a critical mode, with notable and increasing exceptions. This article covers work from the past decade (2009–2019) that deals centrally with animals, from ancient Israel to late antiquity, spanning the Hebrew Bible, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, library of Qumran, rabbinic literature, and material culture. Topics addressed are animal sacrifice and consumption; literary depictions of animals; studies of individual animal species; archaeology and art featuring animals; animal ethics, theology, and law; and critical theoretical approaches to species difference. The conclusion considers future directions for animal studies in ancient Judaism.