animal rights case study

• Help Animals
• Investigations
• Animal Rights Issues
• Students Opposing Speciesism (SOS)
• Join the Action Team
• Monthly Giving
• Your Legacy For Animals
• PETA Vanguard Society
• ‘In Honor of’ and Memorial Gifts
• Membership Services
• More Ways to Support PETA
• Report Cruelty to Animals

Urgent Alerts

• Our Campaigns
• Action Team
• Activist Guide
• Get Active Online
• Leaflets & Stickers
• Adoptable Animals
• Rescue Stories
• Recent Investigations
• Investigations & Rescue Fund
• Animals Used for Experimentation
• Entertainment
• Companion Animals
• Personal Care & Fashion
• Food & Health
• Humane Home
• Animal Companions
• Cruelty-Free Database
• PETA Shopping Guide
• PETA Approved Vegan
• PETA Presents
• Work at PETA
• PETA Global
• Vanguard Society
• More Ways to Support
• Gifts in Wills

The Silver Spring Monkeys: The Case That Launched PETA

In the summer of 1981, PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk , leafed through the pages of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s list of laboratories, picked the closest one, and asked her colleague, Alex, to see if he could get inside. He did and began working as a volunteer at the  Institute for Behavioral Research  (IBR). IBR was a federally funded laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, now closed down for reasons that will soon become apparent. It was run out of a warehouse by psychologist and animal experimenter Edward Taub, a man with no medical training. There, we found 17 monkeys living in tiny rusty wire cages caked with years of accumulated feces in a dungeon-like room. There was no veterinarian to tend to their serious wounds, and they had a lot of them.

Taub, who also had no veterinary training, nevertheless subjected the monkeys to surgeries in which he severed their spinal nerves, rendering one or more of their limbs useless. By means of electric shock, food deprivation, and other cruel methods, he forced them to try to regain the use of their impaired limbs to pick up raisins from a tray—or else go without food. In one experiment, monkeys were shut inside a converted refrigerator and repeatedly electro-shocked until they finally used their disabled arm, if they could. The inside of the refrigerator was covered with blood. In another experiment, monkeys were strapped into a crude restraint chair—their waist, ankles, wrists, and neck held in place with packing tape—and pliers were latched as tightly as possible onto their skin, including on their testicles.

The trauma of the monkeys’ imprisonment and treatment was so severe that many of them had ripped at their own flesh, and they had lost many of their fingers from catching them in the rusted, jagged cage bars. Workers often neglected to feed the monkeys, and the animals would desperately pick through the stinking urine and fecal waste in trays beneath their cages to find something to eat.

PETA gathered meticulous log notes detailing what was happening inside IBR and secretly photographed the crippled monkeys and their horrendous living conditions. Then, after lining up expert witnesses and showing them around the laboratory at night, PETA took the evidence to the police—and an intense, decade-long battle for custody of the monkeys ensued.

This groundbreaking investigation led to the nation’s first arrest and criminal conviction of an animal experimenter for cruelty to animals, the first confiscation of abused animals from a laboratory, and the first U.S. Supreme Court victory for animals used in experiments. It even led to landmark additions to the Animal Welfare Act—and unrelenting public scrutiny of the abuse that animals endure in experimentation . And IBR closed its doors.

PETA has scored many victories for animals in laboratories since the landmark Silver Spring monkeys case, but tragically, experiments like this still go on. You can help by asking your congressional representatives to divert public money from cruel animal experiments into promising, lifesaving, and relevant clinical and non-animal research.

What PETA found on 12 farms exposes how the ASPCA, The Humane Society of the United States, and another “animal welfare” group are endorsing massive animal suffering!

Urge Coach to end its greenwashing and switch to vegan leather.

Urge the Namibian government to reconsider its cruel plans and put a stop to the proposed slaughter.

Urge these Pigeon Forge hotels to reconsider their relationship with Parrot Mountain and to avoid exhibiting parrots or any other wild animals.

Urge Groupon’s CEO to stop selling tickets to SeaWorld.

By submitting this form, you’re acknowledging that you have read and agree to our privacy policy and agree to receive e-mails from us.

“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights? ”

— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and co-author of Animalkind

Text CRAZY to 73822 to take action for chimpanzees suffering in human homes & roadside zoos! Then watch Chimp Crazy, HBO’s new docuseries to learn more.

Terms for automated texts/calls from PETA: http://peta.vg/txt . Text STOP to end, HELP for more info. Msg/data rates may apply. U.S. only.

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

EVs fight warming but are costly. Why aren’t we driving $10,000 Chinese imports?

Toll of QAnon on families of followers

The urgent message coming from boys

They can think, feel pain, love. isn’t it time animals had rights.

Martha Nussbaum lays out ethical, legal case in new book

Martha Nussbaum

Excerpted from “Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility” by Martha C. Nussbaum, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’75

Animals are in trouble all over the world. Our world is dominated by humans everywhere: on land, in the seas, and in the air. No non-human animal escapes human domination. Much of the time, that domination inflicts wrongful injury on animals: whether through the barbarous cruelties of the factory meat industry, through poaching and game hunting, through habitat destruction, through pollution of the air and the seas, or through neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love.

In a way, this problem is age-old. Both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions have deplored human cruelty to animals for around two millennia. The Hindu emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 bce), a convert to Buddhism, wrote about his efforts to give up meat and to forgo all practices that harmed animals. In Greece the Platonist philosophers Plutarch (46–119 ce) and Porphyry (c. 234–305 ce) wrote detailed treatises deploring human cruelty to animals, describing their keen intelligence and their capacity for social life, and urging humans to change their diet and their way of life. But by and large these voices have fallen on deaf ears, even in the supposedly moral realm of the philosophers, and most humans have continued to treat most animals like objects, whose suffering does not matter — although they sometimes make an exception for companion animals. Meanwhile, countless animals have suffered cruelty, deprivation, and neglect.

Because the reach of human cruelty has expanded, so too has the involvement of virtually all people in it. Even people who do not consume meat produced by the factory farming industry are likely to have used single-use plastic items, to use fossil fuels mined beneath the ocean and polluting the air, to dwell in areas in which elephants and bears once roamed, or to live in high-rise buildings that spell death for migratory birds. The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation. Pinning guilt is less important than accepting the fact that humanity as a whole has a collective duty to face and solve these problems.

So far, I have not spoken of the extinction of animal species, because this is a book about loss and deprivation suffered by individual creatures, each of whom matters. Species as such do not suffer loss. However, extinction never takes place without massive suffering of individual creatures: the hunger of a polar bear, starving on an ice floe, unable to cross the sea to hunt; the sadness of an orphan elephant, deprived of care and community as the species dwindles rapidly; the mass extinctions of song-bird species as a result of unbreathable air, a horrible death. When human practices hound species toward extinction, member animals always suffer greatly and live squashed and thwarted lives. Besides, the species themselves matter for creating diverse ecosystems in which animals can live well.

Extinctions would take place even without human intervention. Even in such cases we might have reasons to intervene to stop them, because of the importance of biodiversity. But scientists agree that today’s extinctions are between one thousand and ten thousand times higher than the natural extinction rate. (Our uncertainty is huge, because we are very ignorant of how many species there actually are, particularly where fish and insects are concerned.) Worldwide, approximately one-quarter of the world’s mammals and over 40 percent of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. These include several species of bear, the Asian elephant (endangered), the African elephant (threatened), the tiger, six species of whale, the gray wolf, and so many more. All in all, more than 370 animal species are either endangered or threatened, using the criteria of the US Endangered Species Act, not including birds, and a separate list of similar length for birds. Asian songbirds are virtually extinct in the wild, on account of the lucrative trade in these luxury items. And many other species of birds have recently become extinct. Meanwhile, the international treaty called CITES that is supposed to protect birds (and many other creatures) is toothless and unenforced. The story of this book is not that story of mass extinction, but the sufferings of individual creatures that take place against this background of human indifference to biodiversity.

“The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation.”

There is a further reason why the ethical evasion of the past must end now. Today we know far more about animal lives than we did even 50 years ago. We know much too much for the glib excuses of the past to be offered without shame. Porphyry and Plutarch (and Aristotle before them) knew a lot about animal intelligence and sensitivity. But somehow humans find ways of “forgetting” what the science of the past has plainly revealed, and for many centuries most people, including most philosophers, thought animals were “brute beasts,” automata without a subjective sense of the world, without emotions, without society, and perhaps even without the feeling of pain.

Recent decades, however, have seen an explosion of high-level research covering all areas of the animal world. We now know more not only about animals long closely studied — primates and companion animals — but also about animals who are difficult to study — marine mammals, whales, fish, birds, reptiles, and cephalopods.

We know — not just by observation, but by carefully designed experimental work — that all vertebrates and many invertebrates feel pain subjectively, and have, more generally, a subjectively felt view of the world: the world looks like something to them. We know that all of these animals experience at least some emotions (fear being the most ubiquitous), and that many experience emotions like compassion and grief that involve more complex “takes” on a situation. We know that animals as different as dolphins and crows can solve complicated problems and learn to use tools to solve them. We know that animals have complex forms of social organization and social behavior. More recently, we have been learning that these social groups are not simply places where a rote inherited repertory is acted out, but places of complicated social learning. Species as different as whales, dogs, and many types of birds clearly transmit key parts of the species’ repertoire to their young socially, not just genetically.

What are the implications of this research for ethics? Huge, clearly. We can no longer draw the usual line between our own species and “the beasts,” a line meant to distinguish intelligence, emotion, and sentience from the dense life of a “brute beast.” Nor can we even draw a line between a group of animals we already recognize as sort of “like us” — apes, elephants, whales, dogs — and others who are supposed to be unintelligent. Intelligence takes multiple and fascinating forms in the real world, and birds, evolving by a very different path from humans, have converged on many similar abilities. Even an invertebrate such as the octopus has surprising capacities for intelligent perception: an octopus can recognize individual humans, and can solve complex problems, guiding one of its arms through a maze to obtain food using only its eyes. Once we recognize all this we can hardly be unchanged in our ethical thinking. To put a “brute beast” in a cage seems no more wrong than putting a rock in a terrarium. But that is not what we are doing. We are deforming the existence of intelligent and complexly sentient forms of life. Each of these animals strives for a flourishing life, and each has abilities, social and individual, that equip it to negotiate a decent life in a world that gives animals difficult challenges. What humans are doing is to thwart this striving — and this seems wrong.

But even though the time has come to recognize our ethical responsibility to the other animals, we have few intellectual tools to effect meaningful change. The third reason why we must confront what we are doing to animals now, today, is that we have built a world in which two of humanity’s best tools for progress, law and political theory, have, so far, no or little help to offer us. Law — both domestic and international — has quite a lot to say about the lives of companion animals, but very little to say about any other animals. Nor do animals in most nations have what lawyers call “standing”: that is, the status to bring a legal claim if they are wronged. Of course, animals cannot themselves bring a legal claim, but neither can most humans, including children, people with cognitive disabilities — and, to tell the truth, almost everybody, since people have little knowledge of the law. All of us need a lawyer to press our claims. But all the humans I have mentioned — including people with lifelong cognitive disabilities — count, and can bring a legal claim, assisted by an able advocate. The way we have designed the world’s legal systems, animals do not have this simple privilege. They do not count.

Law is built by humans using the theories they have. When those theories were racist, laws were racist. When theories of sex and gender excluded women, so too did law. And there is no denying that most political thought by humans the world over has been human-centered, excluding animals. Even the theories that purport to offer help in the struggle against abuse are deeply defective, built on an inadequate picture of animal lives and animal striving. As a philosopher and political theorist who is also deeply immersed in law and law teaching, I hope to change things with this book.

Copyright © 2022 by Martha Nussbaum. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Share this article

You might like.

Experts say tension between trade, green-tech policies hampers climate change advances; more targeted response needed

New book by Nieman Fellow explores pain, frustration in efforts to help loved ones break free of hold of conspiracy theorists

When we don’t listen, we all suffer, says psychologist whose new book is ‘Rebels with a Cause’

Billions worldwide deficient in essential micronutrients

Inadequate levels carry risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, blindness

You want to be boss. You probably won’t be good at it.

Study pinpoints two measures that predict effective managers

Weight-loss drug linked to fewer COVID deaths

Large-scale study finds Wegovy reduces risk of heart attack, stroke

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Advance articles
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Submit?
• About Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
• About University of Oxford Faculty of Law
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

1. introduction: the need for legal animal rights theory, 2. can animals have legal rights, 3. do animals have (simple) legal rights, 4. should animals have (fundamental) legal rights, 5. conclusion.

• < Previous

Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and Fundamental Rights

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Saskia Stucki, Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and Fundamental Rights, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560, https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007

• Permissions Icon Permissions

With legal animal rights on the horizon, there is a need for a more systematic theorisation of animal rights as legal rights. This article addresses conceptual, doctrinal and normative issues relating to the nature and foundations of legal animal rights by examining three key questions: can, do and should animals have legal rights? It will show that animals are conceptually possible candidates for rights ascriptions. Moreover, certain ‘animal welfare rights’ could arguably be extracted from existing animal welfare laws, even though these are currently imperfect and weak legal rights at best. Finally, this article introduces the new conceptual vocabulary of simple and fundamental animal rights, in order to distinguish the weak legal rights that animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law from the kind of strong legal rights that animals ought to have as a matter of future law.

Legal animal rights are on the horizon, and there is a need for a legal theory of animal rights—that is, a theory of animal rights as legal rights. While there is a diverse body of moral and political theories of animal rights, 1 the nature and conceptual foundations of legal animal rights remain remarkably underexplored. As yet, only few and fragmented legal analyses of isolated aspects of animal rights exist. 2 Other than that, most legal writing in this field operates with a hazily assumed, rudimentary and undifferentiated conception of animal rights—one largely informed by extralegal notions of moral animal rights—which tends to obscure rather than illuminate the distinctive nature and features of legal animal rights. 3 A more systematic and nuanced theorisation of legal animal rights is, however, necessary and overdue for two reasons: first, a gradual turn to legal rights in animal rights discourse; and, secondly, the incipient emergence of legal animal rights.

First, while animal rights have originally been framed as moral rights, they are increasingly articulated as potential legal rights. That is, animals’ moral rights are asserted in an ‘ought to be legal rights’-sense (or ‘manifesto sense’) 4 that demands legal institutionalisation and refers to the corresponding legal rights which animals should ideally have. 5 A salient reason for transforming moral into legal animal rights is that purely moral rights (which exist prior to and independently of legal validation) do not provide animals with sufficient practical protection, whereas legally recognised rights would be reinforced by the law’s more stringent protection and enforcement mechanisms. 6 With a view to their (potential) juridification, it seems advisable to rethink and reconstruct animal rights as specifically legal rights, rather than simply importing moral animal rights into the legal domain. 7

Secondly, and adding urgency to the need for theorisation, legal animal rights are beginning to emerge from existing law. Recently, a few pioneering courts have embarked on a path of judicial creation of animal rights, arriving at them either through a rights-based interpretation of animal welfare legislation or a dynamic interpretation of constitutional (human) rights. Most notably, the Supreme Court of India has extracted a range of animal rights from the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and, by reading them in the light of the Constitution, elevated those statutory rights to the status of fundamental rights. 8 Furthermore, courts in Argentina 9 and Colombia 10 have extended the fundamental right of habeas corpus , along with the underlying right to liberty, to captive animals. 11 These (so far isolated) acts of judicial recognition of animal rights may be read as early manifestations of an incipient formation of legal animal rights. Against this backdrop, there is a pressing practical need for legal animal rights theory, in order to explain and guide the as yet still nascent—and somewhat haphazard—evolution of legal animal rights.

This article seeks to take the first steps towards building a more systematic and nuanced theory of legal animal rights. Navigating the existing theoretical patchwork, the article revisits and connects relevant themes that have so far been addressed only in a scattered or cursory manner, and consolidates them into an overarching framework for legal animal rights. Moreover, tackling the well-known problem of ambiguity and obscurity involved in the generally vague, inconsistent and undifferentiated use of the umbrella term ‘animal rights’, this article brings analytical clarity into the debate by disentangling and unveiling different meanings and facets of legal animal rights. 12 To this end, the analysis identifies and separates three relevant sets of issues: (i) conceptual issues concerning the nature and foundations of legal animal rights, and, more generally, whether animals are the kind of beings who can potentially hold legal rights; (ii) doctrinal issues pertaining to existing animal welfare law and whether it confers some legal rights on animals—and, if so, what kind of rights; and (iii) normative issues as to why and what kind of legal rights animals ought ideally to have as a matter of future law. These thematic clusters will be addressed through three simple yet key questions: can , do and should animals have legal rights?

Section 2 will show that it is conceptually possible for animals to hold legal rights, and will clarify the formal structure and normative grounds of legal animal rights. Moreover, as section 3 will demonstrate, unwritten animal rights could arguably be extracted from existing animal welfare laws, even though such ‘animal welfare rights’ are currently imperfect and weak legal rights at best. In order to distinguish between these weak legal rights that animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law and the kind of strong legal rights that animals ought to have potentially or ideally, the new conceptual categories of ‘ simple animal rights’ and ‘ fundamental animal rights’ will be introduced. Finally, section 4 will explore a range of functional reasons why animals need such strong, fundamental rights as a matter of future law.

As a preliminary matter, it seems necessary to first address the conceptual issue whether animals potentially can have legal rights, irrespective of doctrinal and normative issues as to whether animals do in fact have, or should have, legal rights. Whether animals are possible or potential right holders—that is, the kind of beings to whom legal rights can be ascribed ‘without conceptual absurdity’ 13 —must be determined based on the general nature of rights, which is typically characterised in terms of the structure (or form) and grounds (or ultimate purpose) of rights. 14 Looking at the idea of animal rights through the lens of general rights theories helps clarify the conceptual foundations of legal animal rights by identifying their possible forms and grounds. The first subsection (A) focusses on two particular forms of conceptually basic rights—claims and liberties—and examines their structural compatibility with animal rights. The second subsection (B) considers the two main competing theories of rights—the will theory and interest theory—and whether, and on what grounds, they can accommodate animals as potential right holders.

A. The Structure of Legal Animal Rights

The formal structure of rights is generally explicated based on the Hohfeldian typology of rights. 15 Hohfeld famously noted that the generic term ‘right’ tends to be used indiscriminately to cover ‘any sort of legal advantage’, and distinguished four different types of conceptually basic rights: claims (rights stricto sensu ), liberties, powers and immunities. 16 In the following, I will show on the basis of first-order rights 17 —claims and liberties—that legal animal rights are structurally possible, and what such legal relations would consist of. 18

(i) Animal claim rights

To have a right in the strictest sense is ‘to have a claim to something and against someone’, the claim right necessarily corresponding with that person’s correlative duty towards the right holder to do or not to do something. 19 This type of right would take the form of animals holding a claim to something against, for example, humans or the state who bear correlative duties to refrain from or perform certain actions. Such legal animal rights could be either negative rights (correlative to negative duties) to non-interference or positive rights (correlative to positive duties) to the provision of some good or service. 20 The structure of claim rights seems especially suitable for animals, because these are passive rights that concern the conduct of others (the duty bearers) and are simply enjoyed rather than exercised by the right holder. 21 Claim rights would therefore assign to animals a purely passive position that is specified by the presence and performance of others’ duties towards animals, and would not require any actions by the animals themselves.

(ii) Animal liberties

Liberties, by contrast, are active rights that concern the right holder’s own conduct. A liberty to engage in or refrain from a certain action is one’s freedom of any contrary duty towards another to eschew or undertake that action, correlative to the no right of another. 22 On the face of it, the structure of liberties appears to lend itself to animal rights. A liberty right would indicate that an animal is free to engage in or avoid certain behaviours, in the sense of being free from a specific duty to do otherwise. Yet, an obvious objection is that animals are generally incapable of having any legal duties. 23 Given that animals are inevitably in a constant state of ‘no duty’ and thus ‘liberty’, 24 this seems to render the notion of liberty rights somewhat pointless and redundant in the case of animals, as it would do nothing more than affirm an already and invariably existing natural condition of dutylessness. However, this sort of ‘natural liberty’ is, in and of itself, only a naked liberty, one wholly unprotected against interferences by others. 25 That is, while animals may have the ‘natural liberty’ of, for example, freedom of movement in the sense of not having (and not being capable of having) a duty not to move around, others do not have a duty vis-à-vis the animals not to interfere with the exercise of this liberty by, for example, capturing and caging them.

The added value of turning the ‘natural liberties’ of animals into liberty rights thus lies in the act of transforming unprotected, naked liberties into protected, vested liberties that are shielded from certain modes of interference. Indeed, it seems sensible to think of ‘natural liberties’ as constituting legal rights only when embedded in a ‘protective perimeter’ of claim rights and correlative duties within which such liberties may meaningfully exist and be exercised. 26 This protective perimeter consists of some general duties (arising not from the liberty right itself, but from other claim rights, such as the right to life and physical integrity) not to engage in ‘at least the cruder forms of interference’, like physical assault or killing, which will preclude most forms of effective interference. 27 Moreover, liberties may be fortified by specific claim rights and correlative duties strictly designed to protect a particular liberty, such as if the state had a (negative) duty not to build highways that cut across wildlife habitat, or a (positive) duty to build wildlife corridors for such highways, in order to facilitate safe and effective freedom of movement for the animals who live in these fragmented habitats.

(iii) Animal rights and duties: correlativity and reciprocity

Lastly, some remarks on the relation between animal rights and duties seem in order. Some commentators hold that animals are unable to possess legal rights based on the influential idea that the capacity for holding rights is inextricably linked with the capacity for bearing duties. 28 Insofar as animals are not capable of bearing legal duties in any meaningful sense, it follows that animals cannot have legal (claim) rights against other animals, given that those other animals would be incapable of holding the correlative duties. But does this disqualify animals from having legal rights altogether, for instance, against legally competent humans or the state?

While duties are a key component of (first-order) rights—with claim rights necessarily implying the presence of a legal duty in others and liberties necessarily implying the absence of a legal duty in the right holder 29 —neither of them logically entails that the right holder bear duties herself . As Kramer aptly puts it:

Except in the very unusual circumstances where someone holds a right against himself, X’s possession of a legal right does not entail X’s bearing of a legal duty; rather, it entails the bearing of a legal duty by somebody else. 30

This underscores an important distinction between the conceptually axiomatic correlativity of rights and duties—the notion that every claim right necessarily implies a duty—and the idea of a reciprocity of rights and duties—the notion that (the capacity for) right holding is conditioned on (the capacity for) duty bearing. While correlativity refers to an existential nexus between a right and a duty held by separate persons within one and the same legal relation , reciprocity posits a normative nexus between the right holding and duty bearing of one and the same person within separate, logically unrelated legal relations.

The claim that the capacity for right holding is somehow contingent on the right holder’s (logically unrelated) capacity for duty bearing is thus, as Kramer puts it, ‘straightforwardly false’ from a Hohfeldian point of view. 31 Nevertheless, there may be other, normative reasons (notably underpinned by social contract theory) for asserting that the class of appropriate right holders should be limited to those entities that, in addition to being structurally possible right holders, are also capable of reciprocating, that is, of being their duty bearers’ duty bearers. 32 However, such a narrow contractarian framing of right holding should be rejected, not least because it misses the current legal reality. 33 With a view to legally incompetent humans (eg infants and the mentally incapacitated), contemporary legal systems have manifestly cut the connection between right holding and the capacity for duty bearing. 34 As Wenar notes, the ‘class of potential right holders has expanded to include duty-less entities’. 35 Similarly, it would be neither conceptually nor legally apposite to infer from the mere fact that animals do not belong to the class of possible duty bearers that they cannot belong to the class of possible right holders. 36

B. The Grounds of Legal Animal Rights

While Hohfeld’s analytical framework is useful to outline the possible forms and composition of legal animal rights, Kelch rightly points out that it remains agnostic as to the normative grounds of potential animal rights. 37 In this respect, the two dominant theories of rights advance vastly differing accounts of the ultimate purpose of rights and who can potentially have them. 38 Whereas the idea of animal rights does not resonate well with the will theory, the interest theory quite readily provides a conceptual home for it.

(i) Will theory

According to the will theory, the ultimate purpose of rights is to promote and protect some aspect of an individual’s autonomy and self-realisation. A legal right is essentially a ‘legally respected choice’, and the right holder a ‘small scale sovereign’ whose exercise of choice is facilitated by giving her discretionary ‘legal powers of control’ over others’ duties. 39 The class of potential right holders thus includes only those entities that possess agency and legal competence, which effectively rules out the possibility of animals as right holders, insofar as they lack the sort or degree of agency necessary for the will-theory conception of rights. 40

However, the fact that animals are not potential right holders under the will theory does not necessarily mean that animals cannot have legal rights altogether. The will theory has attracted abundant criticism for its under-inclusiveness as regards both the class of possible right holders 41 and the types of rights it can plausibly account for, and thus seems to advance too narrow a conception of rights for it to provide a theoretical foundation for all rights. 42 In particular, it may be noted that the kinds of rights typically contemplated as animal rights are precisely of the sort that generally exceed the explanatory power of the will theory, namely inalienable, 43 passive, 44 public-law 45 rights that protect basic aspects of animals’ (partially historically and socially mediated) vulnerable corporeal existence. 46 Such rights, then, are best explained on an interest-theoretical basis.

(ii) Interest theory

Animal rights theories most commonly ground animal rights in animal interests, and thus naturally gravitate to the interest theory of rights. 47 According to the interest theory, the ultimate purpose of rights is the protection and advancement of some aspect(s) of an individual’s well-being and interests. 48 Legal rights are essentially ‘legally-protected interests’ that are of special importance and concern. 49 With its emphasis on well-being rather than on agency, the interest theory seems more open to the possibility of animal rights from the outset. Indeed, as regards the class of possible right holders, the interest theory does little conceptual filtering beyond requiring that right holders be capable of having interests. 50 Given that, depending on the underlying definition of ‘interest’, this may cover all animals, plants and, according to some, even inanimate objects, the fairly modest and potentially over-inclusive conceptual criterion of ‘having interests’ is typically complemented by the additional, more restrictive moral criterion of ‘having moral status’. 51 Pursuant to this limitation, not just any being capable of having interests can have rights, but only those whose well-being is not merely of instrumental, but of intrinsic or ‘ultimate value’. 52

Accordingly, under the interest theory, two conditions must be met for animals to qualify as potential right holders: (i) animals must have interests, (ii) the protection of which is required not merely for ulterior reasons, but for the animals’ own sake, because their well-being is intrinsically valuable. Now, whether animals are capable of having interests in the sense relevant to having rights and whether they have moral status in the sense of inherent or ultimate value is still subject to debate. For example, some have denied that animals possess interests based on an understanding of interests as wants and desires that require complex cognitive abilities such as having beliefs and language. 53 However, most interest theories opt for a broader understanding of interests in the sense of ‘being in someone’s interest’, meaning that an interest holder can be ‘made better or worse off’ and is able to benefit in some way from protective action. 54 Typically, though not invariably, the capacity for having interests in this broad sense is bound up with sentience—the capacity for conscious and subjective experiences of pain, suffering and pleasure. 55 Thus, most interest theorists quite readily accept (sentient) animals as potential right holders, that is, as the kind of beings that are capable of holding legal rights. 56

More importantly yet for legal purposes, the law already firmly rests on the recognition of (some) animals as beings who possess intrinsically valuable interests. Modern animal welfare legislation cannot be intelligibly explained other than as acknowledging that the animals it protects (i) have morally and legally relevant goods and interests, notably in their welfare, life and physical or mental integrity. 57 Moreover, it rests on an (implicit or explicit) recognition of those animals as (ii) having moral status in the sense of having intrinsic value. The underlying rationale of modern, non-anthropocentric, ethically motivated animal protection laws is the protection of animals qua animals, for their own sake, rather than for instrumental reasons. 58 Some laws go even further by directly referencing the ‘dignity’ or ‘intrinsic value’ of animals. 59

It follows that existing animal welfare laws already treat animals as intrinsically valuable holders of some legally relevant interests—and thus as precisely the sorts of beings who possess the qualities that are, under an interest theory of rights, necessary and sufficient for having rights. This, then, prompts the question whether those very laws do not only conceptually allow for potential animal rights, but might also give rise to actual legal rights for animals.

Notwithstanding that animals could have legal rights conceptually, the predominant doctrinal opinion is that, as a matter of positive law, animals do not have any, at least not in the sense of proper, legally recognised and claimable rights. 60 Yet, there is a certain inclination, especially in Anglo-American parlance, to speak—in a rather vague manner—of ‘animal rights’ as if they already exist under current animal welfare legislation. Such talk of existing animal rights is, however, rarely backed up with further substantiations of the underlying claim that animal welfare laws do in fact confer legal rights on animals. In the following, I will examine whether animals’ existing legal protections may be classified as legal rights and, if so, what kind of rights these constitute. The analysis will show (A) that implicit animal rights (hereinafter referred to as ‘animal welfare rights’) 61 can be extracted from animal welfare laws as correlatives of explicit animal welfare duties, but that this reading remains largely theoretical so far, given that such unwritten animal rights are hardly legally recognised in practice. Moreover, (B) the kind of rights derivable from animal welfare laws are currently at best imperfect and weak rights that do not provide animals with the sort of robust normative protection that is generally associated with legal rights, and typically also expected from legal animal rights qua institutionalised moral animal rights. Finally, (C) the new conceptual categories of ‘ simple animal rights’ and ‘ fundamental animal rights’ are introduced in order to distinguish, and account for the qualitative differences, between such current, imperfect, weak animal rights and potential, ideal, strong animal rights.

A. Extracting ‘Animal Welfare Rights’ from Animal Welfare Laws

(i) the simple argument from correlativity.

Existing animal welfare laws are not framed in the language of rights and do not codify any explicit animal rights. They do, however, impose on people legal duties designed to protect animals—duties that demand some behaviour that is beneficial to the welfare of animals. Some commentators contend that correlative (claim) rights are thereby conferred upon animals as the beneficiaries of such duties. 62 This view is consistent with, and, indeed, the logical conclusion of, an interest-theoretical analysis. 63 Recall that rights are essentially legally protected interests of intrinsically valuable individuals, and that a claim right is the ‘position of normative protectedness that consists in being owed a … legal duty’. 64 Under existing animal welfare laws, some goods of animals are legally protected interests in exactly this sense of ultimately valuable interests that are protected through the imposition of duties on others. However, the inference from existing animal welfare duties to the existence of correlative ‘animal welfare rights’ appears to rely on a somewhat simplistic notion of correlativity, along the lines of ‘where there is a duty there is a right’. 65 Two objections in particular may be raised against the view that beneficial duties imposed by animal welfare laws are sufficient for creating corresponding legal rights in animals.

First, not every kind of duty entails a correlative right. 66 While some duties are of an unspecific and general nature, only relational, directed duties which are owed to rather than merely regarding someone are the correlatives of (claim) rights. Closely related, not everyone who stands to benefit from the performance of another’s duty has a correlative right. According to a standard delimiting criterion, beneficial duties generate rights only in the intended beneficiaries of such duties, that is, those who are supposed to benefit from duties designed to protect their interests. 67 Yet, animal welfare duties, in a contemporary reading, are predominantly understood not as indirect duties regarding animals—duties imposed to protect, for example, an owner’s interest in her animal, public sensibilities or the moral character of humans—but as direct duties owed to the protected animals themselves. 68 Moreover, the constitutive purpose of modern animal welfare laws is to protect animals for their own sake. Animals are therefore clearly beneficiaries in a qualified sense, that is, they are not merely accidental or incidental, but the direct and intended primary beneficiaries of animal welfare duties. 69

Secondly, one may object that an analysis of animal rights as originating from intentionally beneficial duties rests on a conception of rights precisely of the sort which has the stigma of redundancy attached to it. Drawing on Hart, this would appear to cast rights as mere ‘alternative formulation of duties’ and thus ‘no more than a redundant translation of duties … into a terminology of rights’. 70 Admittedly, as MacCormick aptly puts it:

[To] rest an account of claim rights solely on the notion that they exist whenever a legal duty is imposed by a law intended to benefit assignable individuals … is to treat rights as being simply the ‘reflex’ of logically prior duties. 71

One way of responding to this redundancy problem is to reverse the logical order of rights and duties. On this account, rights are not simply created by (and thus logically posterior to) beneficial duties, but rather the converse: such duties are derived from and generated by (logically antecedent) rights. For example, according to Raz, ‘Rights are grounds of duties in others’ and thus justificationally prior to duties. 72 However, if rights are understood not just as existentially correlative, but as justificationally prior to duties, identifying intentionally beneficial animal welfare duties as the source of (logically posterior) animal rights will not suffice. In order to accommodate the view that rights are grounds of duties, the aforementioned argument from correlativity needs to be reconsidered and refined.

(ii) A qualified argument from correlativity

A refined, and reversed, argument from correlativity must show that animal rights are not merely reflexes created by animal welfare duties, but rather the grounds for such duties. In other words, positive animal welfare duties must be plausibly explained as some kind of codified reflection, or visible manifestation, of ‘invisible’ background animal rights that give rise to those duties.

This requires further clarification of the notion of a justificational priority of rights over duties. On the face of it, the idea that rights are somehow antecedent to duties appears to be at odds with the Hohfeldian correlativity axiom, which stipulates an existential nexus of mutual entailment between rights and duties—one cannot exist without the other. 73 Viewed in this light, it seems paradoxical to suggest that rights are causal for the very duties that are simultaneously constitutive of those rights—cause and effect seem to be mutually dependent. Gewirth offers a plausible explanation for this seemingly circular understanding of the relation between rights and duties. He illustrates that the ‘priority of claim rights over duties in the order of justifying purpose or final causality is not antithetical to their being correlative to each other’ by means of an analogy:

Parents are prior to their children in the order of efficient causality, yet the (past or present) existence of parents can be inferred from the existence of children, as well as conversely. Hence, the causal priority of parents to children is compatible with the two groups’ being causally as well as conceptually correlative. The case is similar with rights and duties, except that the ordering relation between them is one of final rather than efficient causality, of justifying purpose rather than bringing-into-existence. 74

Upon closer examination, this point may be specified even further. To stay with the analogy of (biological) 75 parents and their children: it is actually the content of ‘parents’—a male and a female (who at some point procreate together)—that exists prior to and independently of possibly ensuing ‘children’, whereas this content turns into ‘parents’ only in conjunction with ‘children’. That is, the concepts of ‘parents’ and ‘children’ are mutually entailing, whilst, strictly speaking, it is not ‘parents’, but rather that which will later be called ‘parents’ only once the ‘child’ comes into existence—the pre-existing content—which is antecedent to and causal for ‘children’.

Applied to the issue of rights and duties, this means that it is actually the content of a ‘right’—an interest—that exists prior to and independently of, and is (justificationally) causal for the creation of, a ‘duty’, which, in turn, is constitutive of a ‘right’. The distinction between ‘right’ and its content—an interest—allows the pinpointing of the latter as the reason for, and the former as the concomitant correlative of, a duty imposed to protect the pre-existing interest. It may thus be restated, more precisely, that it is not rights, but the protected interests which are grounds of duties. Incidentally, this specification is consistent with Raz’s definition of rights, according to which ‘having a right’ means that an aspect of the right holder’s well-being (her interest) ‘is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty’. 76 Now, the enactment of modern animal welfare laws is in and of itself evidence of the fact that some aspects of animals’ well-being (their interests) are—both temporally and justificationally—causal and a sufficient reason for imposing duties on others. Put differently: animal interests are grounds of animal welfare duties , and this, in turn, is conceptually constitutive of animal rights .

In conclusion, existing animal welfare laws could indeed be analysed as comprising unwritten ‘animal welfare rights’ as implicit correlatives of the explicit animal welfare duties imposed on others. The essential feature of legal rules conferring rights is that they specifically aim at protecting individual interests or goods—whether they do so expressis verbis or not is irrelevant. 77 Even so, in order for a right to be an actual (rather than a potential or merely postulated) legal right, it should at least be legally recognised (if not claimable and enforceable), 78 which is determined by the applicable legal rules. In the absence of unequivocal wording, whether a legal norm confers unwritten rights on animals becomes a matter of legal interpretation. While theorists can show that a rights-based approach lies within the bounds of a justifiable interpretation of the law, an actual, valid legal right hardly comes to exist by the mere fact that some theorists claim it exists. For that to happen, it seems instrumental that some public authoritative body, notably a court, recognises it as such. That is, while animals’ existing legal protections may already provide for all the ingredients constitutive of rights, it takes a court to actualise this potential , by authoritatively interpreting those legal rules as constituting rights of animals. However, because courts, with a few exceptions, have not done so thus far, it seems fair to say that unwritten animal rights are not (yet) legally recognised in practice and remain a mostly theoretical possibility for now. 79

B. The Weakness of Current ‘Animal Welfare Rights’

Besides the formal issue of legal recognition, there are substantive reasons for questioning whether the kind of rights extractable from animal welfare laws are really rights at all. This is because current ‘animal welfare rights’ are unusually weak rights that do not afford the sort of strong normative protection that is ordinarily associated with legal rights. 80 Classifying animals’ existing legal protections as ‘rights’ may thus conflict with the deeply held view that, because they protect interests of special importance, legal rights carry special normative force . 81 This quality is expressed in metaphors of rights as ‘trumps’, 82 ‘protective fences’, 83 protective shields or ‘No Trespassing’ signs, 84 or ‘suits of armor’. 85 Rights bestow upon individuals and their important interests a particularly robust kind of legal protection against conflicting individual or collective interests, by singling out ‘those interests that are not to be sacrificed to the utilitarian calculus ’ and ‘whose promotion or protection is to be given qualitative precedence over the social calculus of interests generally’. 86 Current ‘animal welfare rights’, by contrast, provide an atypically weak form of legal protection, notably for two reasons: because they protect interests of secondary importance or because they are easily overridden.

In order to illustrate this, consider the kind of rights that can be extracted from current animal welfare laws. Given that these are the correlatives of existing animal welfare duties, the substance of these rights must mirror the content laid down in the respective legal norms. This extraction method produces, first, a rather odd subgroup of ‘animal welfare rights’ that have a narrow substantive scope protecting highly specific, secondary interests, such as a (relative) right to be slaughtered with prior stunning, 87 an (absolute) right that experiments involving ‘serious injuries that may cause severe pain shall not be carried out without anaesthesia’ 88 or a right of chicks to be killed by fast-acting methods, such as homogenisation or gassing, and to not be stacked on top of each other. 89 The weak and subsidiary character of such rights becomes clearer when placed within the permissive institutional context in which they operate, and when taking into account the more basic interests that are left unprotected. 90 While these rights may protect certain secondary, derivative interests (such as the interest in being killed in a painless manner ), they are simultaneously premised on the permissibility of harming the more primary interests at stake (such as the interest in not being killed at all). Juxtaposed with the preponderance of suffering and killing that is legally allowed in the first place, phrasing the residual legal protections that animals do receive as ‘rights’ may strike us as misleading. 91

But then there is a second subgroup of ‘animal welfare rights’, extractable from general animal welfare provisions, that have a broader scope, protecting more basic, primary interests, such as a right to well-being, life, 92 dignity, 93 to not suffer unnecessarily, 94 or against torture and cruel treatment. 95 Although the object of such rights is of a more fundamental nature, the substantive guarantee of these facially fundamental rights is, to a great extent, eroded by a conspicuously low threshold for permissible infringements. 96 That is, these rights suffer from a lack of normative force, which manifests in their characteristically high infringeability (ie their low resistance to being overridden). Certainly, most rights (whether human or animal) are relative prima facie rights that allow for being balanced against conflicting interests and whose infringement constitutes a violation only when it is not justified, notably in terms of necessity and proportionality. 97 Taking rights seriously does, however, require certain safeguards ensuring that rights are only overridden by sufficiently important considerations whose weight is proportionate to the interests at stake. As pointed out by Waldron, the idea of rights is seized on as a way of resisting, or at least restricting, the sorts of trade-offs that would be acceptable in an unqualified utilitarian calculus, where ‘important individual interests may end up being traded off against considerations which are intrinsically less important’. 98 Yet, this is precisely what happens to animals’ prima facie protected interests, any of which—irrespective of how important or fundamental they are—may enter the utilitarian calculus, where they typically end up being outweighed by human interests that are comparatively less important or even trivial, notably dietary and fashion preferences, economic profitability, recreation or virtually any other conceivable human interest. 99

Any ‘animal welfare rights’ that animals may presently be said to have are thus either of the substantively oddly specific, yet rather secondary, kind or, in the case of more fundamental prima facie rights, such that are highly infringeable and ‘evaporate in the face of consequential considerations’. 100 The remaining question is whether these features render animals’ existing legal protections non-rights or just particularly unfit or weak rights , but rights nonetheless. The answer will depend on whether the quality of special strength, weight or force is considered a conceptually constitutive or merely typical but not essential feature of rights. On the first view, a certain normative force would function as a threshold criterion for determining what counts as a right and for disqualifying those legal protections that may structurally resemble rights but do not meet a minimum weight. 101 On the second view, the normative force of rights would serve as a variable that defines the particular weight of different types of rights on a spectrum from weak to strong. 102 To illustrate the intricacies of drawing a clear line between paradigmatically strong rights, weak rights or non-rights based on this criterion, let us return to the analogy with (biological) ‘parents’. In a minimal sense, the concept of ‘parents’ may be essentially defined as ‘biological creators of a child’. Typically, however, a special role as nurturer and caregiver is associated with the concept of ‘parent’. Now, is someone who merely meets the minimal conceptual criterion (by being the biological creator), but not the basic functions attached to the concept (by not giving care), still a ‘parent’? And, if so, to what extent? Are they a full and proper ‘parent’, or merely an imperfect, dysfunctional form of ‘parent’, a bad ‘parent’, but a ‘parent’ nonetheless? Maybe current animal rights are ‘rights’ in a similar sense as an absent, negligent, indifferent biological mother or father who does not assume the role and responsibilities that go along with parenthood is still a ‘parent’. That is, animals’ current legal protections may meet the minimal conceptual criteria for rights, but they do not perform the characteristic normative function of rights. They are, therefore, at best atypically weak and imperfect rights.

C. The Distinction between Simple and Fundamental Animal Rights

In the light of the aforesaid, if one adopts the view that animals’ existing legal protections constitute legal rights—that is, if one concludes that existing animal welfare laws confer legal rights on animals despite a lack of explicit legal enactment or of any coherent judicial recognition of unwritten animal rights, and that the kind of rights extractable from animal welfare law retain their rights character regardless of how weak they are—then an important qualification needs to be made regarding the nature and limits of such ‘animal welfare rights’. In particular, it must be emphasised that this type of legal animal rights falls short of (i) our ordinary understanding of legal rights as particularly robust protections of important interests and (ii) institutionalising the sort of inviolable, basic moral animal rights (along the lines of human rights) that animal rights theorists typically envisage. 103 It thus seems warranted to separate the kind of imperfect and weak legal rights that animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law from the kind of ideal, 104 proper, strong fundamental rights that animals potentially ought to have as a matter of future law.

In order to denote and account for the qualitative difference between these two types of legal animal rights, and drawing on similar distinctions as regards the rights of individuals under public and international law, 105 I propose to use the conceptual categories of fundamental animal rights and other, simple animal rights. As to the demarcating criteria, we can distinguish between simple and fundamental animal rights based on a combination of two factors: (i) substance (fundamentality or non-fundamentality of the protected interests) and (ii) normative force (degree of infringeability). Accordingly, simple animal rights can be defined as weak legal rights whose substantive content is of a non-fundamental, ancillary character and/or that lack normative force due to their high infringeability. In contradistinction, fundamental animal rights are strong legal rights along the lines of human rights that are characterised by the cumulative features of substantive fundamentality and normative robustness due to their reduced infringeability.

The ‘animal welfare rights’ derivable from current animal welfare laws are simple animal rights. However, it is worth noting that while the first subtype of substantively non-fundamental ‘animal welfare rights’ belongs to this category irrespective of their infringeability, 106 the second subtype of substantively fundamental ‘animal welfare rights’ presently falls in this category purely in respect of their characteristically high infringeability. Yet, the latter is a dynamic and changeable feature, insofar as these rights could be dealt with, in case of conflict, in a manner whereby they would prove to be more robust. In other words, while the simple animal rights of the second subtype currently lack the normative force of legal rights, they do have the potential to become fundamental animal rights. Why animals need such fundamental rights will be explored in the final section.

Beyond the imperfect, weak, simple rights that animals may be said to have based on existing animal welfare laws, a final normative question remains with a view to the future law: whether animals ought to have strong legal rights proper. I will focus on fundamental animal rights—such as the right to life, bodily integrity, liberty and freedom from torture—as these correspond best with the kind of ‘ought to be legal rights’ typically alluded to in animal rights discourse. Given the general appeal of rights language, it is not surprising that among animal advocates there is an overall presumption in favour of basic human rights-like animal rights. 107 However, it is often simply assumed that, rather than elucidated why, legal rights would benefit animals and how this would strengthen their protection. In order to undergird the normative claim that animals should have strong legal rights, the following subsections will look at functional reasons why animals need such rights. 108 I will do so through a non-exhaustive exploration of the potential legal advantages and political utility of fundamental animal rights over animals’ current legal protections (be they animal welfare laws or ‘animal welfare rights’).

A. Procedural Aspect: Standing and Enforceability

Against the backdrop of today’s well-established ‘enforcement gap’ and ‘standing dilemma’, 109 one of the most practical benefits typically associated with, or expected from, legal animal rights is the facilitation of standing for animals in their own right and, closely related, the availability of more efficient mechanisms for the judicial enforcement of animals’ legal protections. 110 This is because legal rights usually include the procedural element of having standing to sue, the right to seek redress and powers of enforcement—which would enable animals (represented by legal guardians) to institute legal proceedings in their own right and to assert injuries of their own. 111 This would also ‘decentralise’ enforcement, that is, it would not be concentrated in the hands (and at the sole discretion) of public authorities, but supplemented by private standing of animals to demand enforcement. Ultimately, such an expanded enforceability could also facilitate incremental legal change by feeding animal rights questions into courts as fora for public deliberation.

However, while standing and enforceability constitute crucial procedural components of any effective legal protection of animals, for present purposes, it should be noted that fundamental animal rights (or any legal animal rights) are—albeit maybe conducive—neither necessary nor sufficient to this end. On the one hand, not all legal rights (eg some socio-economic human rights) are necessarily enforceable. Merely conferring legal rights on animals will therefore, in itself, not guarantee sufficient legal protection from a procedural point of view. Rather, fundamental animal rights must encompass certain procedural rights, such as the right to access to justice, in order to make them effectively enforceable. On the other hand, animals or designated animal advocates could simply be granted standing auxiliary to today’s animal welfare laws, which would certainly contribute towards narrowing the enforcement gap. 112 Yet, standing as such merely offers the purely procedural benefit of being able to legally assert and effectively enforce any given legal protections that animals may have, but has no bearing on the substantive content of those enforceable protections. Given that the issue is not just one of improving the enforcement of animals’ existing legal protections, but also of substantially improving them, standing alone cannot substitute for strong substantive animal rights. Therefore, animals will ultimately need both strong substantive and enforceable rights, which may be best achieved through an interplay of fundamental rights and accompanying procedural guarantees.

B. Substantive Aspect: Stronger Legal Protection for Important Interests

The aforesaid suggests that the critical function of fundamental animal rights is not procedural in nature; rather, it is to substantively improve and fortify the protection of important animal interests. In particular, fundamental animal rights would strengthen the legal protection of animals on three levels: by establishing an abstract equality of arms, by broadening the scope of protection to include more fundamental substantive guarantees and by raising the burden of justification for infringements.

First of all, fundamental animal rights would create the structural preconditions for a level playing field where human and animal interests are both reinforced by equivalent rights, and can thus collide on equal terms. Generally speaking, not all legally recognised interests count equally when balanced against each other, and rights-empowered interests typically take precedence over or are accorded more weight than unqualified competing interests. 113 At present, the structural makeup of the balancing process governing human–animal conflicts is predisposed towards a prioritisation of human over animal interests. Whereas human interests are buttressed by strong, often fundamental rights (such as economic, religious or property rights), the interests at stake on the animal side, if legally protected at all, enter the utilitarian calculus as unqualified interests that are merely shielded by simple animal welfare laws, or simple rights that evaporate quickly in situations of conflict and do not compare to the sorts of strong rights that reinforce contrary human interests. 114 In order to achieve some form of abstract equality of arms, animals’ interests need to be shielded by strong legal rights that are a match to humans’ rights. Fundamental animal rights would correct this structural imbalance and set the stage for an equal consideration of interests that is not a priori biased in favour of humans’ rights.

Furthermore, as defined above, fundamental animal rights are characterised by both their substantive fundamentality and normative force, and would thus strengthen animals’ legal protection in two crucial respects. On a substantive level , fundamental animal rights are grounded in especially important, fundamental interests. Compared to substantively non-fundamental simple animal rights, which provide for narrow substantive guarantees that protect secondary interests, fundamental animal rights would expand the scope of protection to cover a wider array of basic and primary interests. As a result, harming fundamentally important interests of animals—while readily permissible today insofar as such interests are often not legally protected in the first place 115 —would trigger a justification requirement that initially allows those animal interests to enter into a balancing process. For even with fundamental animal rights in play, conflicts between human and animal interests will inevitably continue to exist—albeit at the elevated and abstractly equal level of conflicts of rights—and therefore require some sort of balancing mechanism. 116

On this justificatory level , fundamental animal rights would then demand a special kind and higher burden of justification for infringements. 117 As demonstrated above, substantively fundamental yet highly infringeable simple animal rights are marked by a conspicuously low threshold for justifiable infringements, and are regularly outweighed by inferior or even trivial human interests. By contrast, the normative force of fundamental animal rights rests on their ability to raise the ‘level of the minimally sufficient justification’. 118 Modelling these more stringent justification requirements on established principles of fundamental (human) rights adjudication, this would, first, limit the sorts of considerations that constitute a ‘legitimate aim’ which can be balanced against fundamental animal rights. Furthermore, the balancing process must encompass a strict proportionality analysis, comprised of the elements of suitability, necessity and proportionality stricto sensu , which would preclude the bulk of the sorts of low-level justifications that are currently sufficient. 119 This heightened threshold for justifiable infringements, in turn, translates into a decreased infringeability of fundamental animal rights and an increased immunisation of animals’ prima facie protected interests against being overridden by conflicting considerations and interests of lesser importance.

Overall, considering this three-layered strengthening of the legal protection of animals’ important interests, fundamental animal rights are likely to set robust limits to the violability and disposability of animals as means to human ends, and to insulate animals from many of the unnecessary and disproportionate inflictions of harm that are presently allowed by law.

C. Fallback Function: The Role of Rights in Non-ideal Societies

Because contemporary human–animal interactions are, for the most part, detrimental to animals, the latter appear to be in particular need of robust legal protections against humans and society. 120 Legal rights, as strong (but not impenetrable) shields, provide an instrument well suited for this task, as they operate in a way that singles out and protects important individual goods against others and the political community as a whole. For this reason, rights are generally considered an important counter-majoritarian institution, but have also been criticised for their overly individualistic, antagonistic and anti-communitarian framing. 121 Certainly, it may be debated whether there is a place for the institution of rights in an ideal society—after all, rights are not decrees of nature, but human inventions that are historically and socially contingent. 122 However, rights are often born from imperfect social conditions, as a ‘response to a failure of social responsibility’ 123 and as corrections of experiences of injustice, or, as Dershowitz puts it: ‘ rights come from wrongs ’. 124 Historical experience suggests that, at least in non-ideal societies, there is a practical need for rights as a safety net—a ‘position of fall-back and security’ 125 —that guarantees individuals a minimum degree of protection, in case or because other, less coercive social or moral mechanisms fail to do so.

Yet, as Edmundson rightly points out, this view of rights as backup guarantees does not quite capture the particular need for rights in the case of animals. 126 It is premised on the existence of a functioning overall social structure that can in some cases, and maybe in the ideal case, substitute for rights. However, unlike many humans, most animals are not embedded in a web of caring, affectionate, benevolent relations with humans to begin with, but rather are caught up in a system of exploitative, instrumental and harmful relations. For the vast majority of animals, it is not enough to say that rights would serve them as fallbacks, because there is nowhere to fall from—by default, animals are already at (or near) the bottom. Accordingly, the concrete need for rights may be more acute in the case of animals, as their function is not merely to complement, but rather to compensate for social and moral responsibility, which is lacking in the first place. 127 To give a (somewhat exaggerated) example: from the perspective of a critical legal scholar, meta-theorising from his office in the ivory tower, it may seem easier, and even desirable, to intellectually dispense with the abstract notion of rights, whereas for an elephant who is actually hunted down for his ivory tusks, concrete rights may make a very real difference, literally between life and death. Therefore, under the prevailing social conditions, animals need a set of basic rights as a primary ‘pull-up’ rather than as a subsidiary backup—that is, as compensatory baseline guarantees rather than as complementary background guarantees.

D. Transformative Function: Rights as ‘Bridges’ between Non-ideal Realities and Normative Ideals

Notwithstanding that animals need fundamental rights, we should not fail to recognise that even the minimum standards such rights are designed to establish and safeguard seem highly ambitious and hardly politically feasible at present. Even a rudimentary protection of fundamental animal rights would require far-ranging changes in our treatment of animals, and may ultimately rule out ‘virtually all existing practices of the animal-use industries’. 128 Considering how deeply the instrumental and inherently harmful use of animals is woven into the economic and cultural fabric of contemporary societies, and how pervasive animal cruelty is on both an individual and a collective level, the implications of fundamental animal rights indeed seem far removed from present social practices. 129 This chasm between normative aspirations and the deeply imperfect empirical realities they collide with is not, however, a problem unique to fundamental animal rights; rather, it is generally in the nature of fundamental rights—human or animal—to postulate normative goals that remain, to some extent, aspirational and unattainable. 130 Aspirational rights express commitments to ideals that, even if they may not be fully realisable at the time of their formal recognition, act as a continuous reminder and impulse that stimulates social and legal change towards a more expansive implementation. 131 In a similar vein, Bilchitz understands fundamental rights as moral ideals that create the pressure for legal institutionalisation and as ‘bridging concepts’ that facilitate the transition from past and present imperfect social realities towards more just societies. 132

This, then, provides a useful lens for thinking about the aspirational nature and transformative function of fundamental animal rights. Surely, the mere formal recognition of fundamental animal rights will not, by any realistic measure, bring about an instant practical achievement of the ultimate goal of ‘abolishing exploitation and liberating animals from enslavement’. 133 They do, however, create the legal infrastructure for moving from a non-ideal reality towards more ideal social conditions in which animal rights can be respected. For example, a strong animal right to life would (at least in industrialised societies) preclude most forms of killing animals for food, and would thus certainly conflict with the entrenched practice of eating meat. Yet, while the current social normality of eating animals may make an immediate prohibition of meat production and consumption unrealistic, it is also precisely the reason why animals need a right to life (ie a right not to be eaten), as fundamental rights help to denormalise (formerly) accepted social practices and to establish, internalise and habituate normative boundaries. 134 Moreover, due to their dynamic nature, fundamental rights can generate successive waves of more stringent and expansive duties over time. 135 Drawing on Bilchitz, the established concept of ‘progressive realisation’ (originally developed in the context of socio-economic human rights) may offer a helpful legal framework for the gradual practical implementation of animal rights. Accordingly, each fundamental animal right could be seen as comprising a minimum core that has to be ensured immediately, coupled with a general prohibition of retrogressive measures , and an obligation to progressively move towards a fuller realisation . 136 Therefore, even if fundamental animal rights may currently not be fully realisable, the very act of introducing them into law and committing to them as normative ideals places animals on the ‘legal map’ 137 and will provide a powerful generative basis—a starting point rather than an endpoint 138 —from which a dynamic process towards their more expansive realisation can unfold.

The question of animal rights has been of long-standing moral concern. More recently, the matter of institutionalising moral animal rights has come to the fore, and attaining legal rights for animals has become an important practical goal of animal advocates. This article started out from the prefatory observation that the process of juridification may already be in its early stages, as judicially recognised animal rights are beginning to emerge from both animal welfare law and human rights law. With legal animal rights on the horizon, the analysis set out to systematically address the arising conceptual, doctrinal and normative issues, in order to provide a theoretical underpinning for this legal development. The article showed that the idea of legal animal rights has a sound basis in both legal theory as well as in existing law. That is, legal animal rights are both conceptually possible and already derivable from current animal welfare laws. However, the analysis has also revealed that the ‘animal welfare rights’ which animals may be said to have as a matter of positive law fall short of providing the sort of strong normative protection that is typically associated with legal rights and that is furthermore expected from legal animal rights qua institutionalised moral animal rights. This discrepancy gave rise to a new conceptual distinction between two types of legal animal rights: simple and fundamental animal rights.

While the umbrella term ‘animal rights’ is often used loosely to refer to a wide range of legal protections that the law may grant to animals, distinguishing between simple and fundamental animal rights helps to unveil important differences between what we may currently call ‘legal animal rights’ based on existing animal welfare laws, which are weak legal rights at best, and the kind of strong, fundamental legal rights that animals should have as a matter of future law. This distinction is further conducive to curbing the trivialisation of the language of animal rights, as it allows us to preserve the normative force of fundamental animal rights by separating out weaker rights and classifying them as other, simple animal rights. Lastly, it is interesting to note that, with courts deriving legal animal rights from both animal welfare law and from constitutional, fundamental or human rights law, first prototypes of simple and fundamental animal rights are already discernible in emerging case law. Whereas Christopher Stone once noted that ‘each successive extension of rights to some new entity has been … a bit unthinkable’ throughout legal history, 139 the findings of this article suggest that we may presently be witnessing a new generation of legal rights in the making—legal animal rights, simple and fundamental.

This article is the first part of my postdoctoral research project ‘Trilogy on a Legal Theory of Animal Rights’, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. For helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, I am indebted to William Edmundson, Raffael Fasel, Chris Green, Christoph Krenn, Visa Kurki, Will Kymlicka, Nico Müller, Anne Peters, Kristen Stilt, MH Tse, Steven White, Derek Williams and the anonymous reviewers for the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.

Seminally, Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (University of California Press 1983); Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (OUP 2011).

See, notably, Matthew H Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (2001) 14 CJLJ 29; Tom L Beauchamp, ‘Rights Theory and Animal Rights’ in Tom L Beauchamp and RG Frey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (OUP 2011); William A Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (2015) 23 Journal of Political Philosophy 345; Gary L Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (first printed 1995, Temple UP 2007) 91ff; Steven M Wise, ‘Hardly a Revolution—The Eligibility of Nonhuman Animals for Dignity-Rights in a Liberal Democracy’ (1998) 22 Vt L Rev 793; Anne Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité: Human-Animal Comparisons in Law’ (2016) 5 TEL 25; Thomas G Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights’ (1999) 27 BC Envtl Aff L Rev 1.

Much legal scholarship deals with animal rights in a rather cursory and incidental manner, because it typically focusses on parallel debates that are closely related to, but seen as preceding, the issue of rights. For example, much has been written about the systemic shortcomings of animal welfare legislation, which—within the entrenched animal welfare/rights-dualism—has served to undergird calls for shifting towards a rights -paradigm for legal protection of animals. Another focal point of legal scholars has been to change the legal status of animals from property to person , which is taken to be a prerequisite for right holding. Yet, even though legal rights for animals may be the ultimate goal informing these debates, surprisingly little detailed attention has been given to such envisaged legal animal rights per se.

Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Prentice-Hall 1973) 67.

See eg Alasdair Cochrane, Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations (Columbia UP 2012) 14–15, 207 (whose ‘account of the moral rights of animals … proposes what the legal rights of animals ought to be ’); cf Joel Feinberg, ‘In Defence of Moral Rights’ (1992) 12 OJLS 149 (describing this indirect way of referencing legal rights as the ‘“There ought to be a law” theory of moral rights’, 156).

As noted by Favre, what is required is ‘that the legal system intervene when personal morals or ethics do not adequately protect animals from human abuse’. David Favre, ‘Integrating Animal Interests into Our Legal System’ (2004) 10 Animal Law Review 87, 88.

Even though moral and legal rights are intimately connected (see HLA Hart, ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’ (1955) 64 Philosophical Review 175, 177), a somewhat distinct (or at least modified and refined) theorisation is warranted because, unlike moral animal rights, legal animal rights are constituted by legal systems, and their existence and scope have to be determined based on the applicable legal rules. As Wise puts it: ‘philosophers argue moral rights; judges decide legal rights’. Steven M Wise, Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights (Perseus 2002) 34.

Supreme Court of India 7 May 2014, civil appeal no 5387 of 2014 [27] [56] [62ff]; see further Kerala High Court 6 June 2000, AIR 2000 KER 340 (expressing the opinion that ‘legal rights shall not be the exclusive preserve of the humans’, [13]); Delhi High Court 15 May 2015, CRL MC no 2051/2015 [3] [5] (recognizing birds’ ‘fundamental rights to fly in the sky’).

Tercer Juzgado de Garantías de Mendoza 3 November 2016, Expte Nro P-72.254/15; this landmark decision was preceded by an obiter dictum in Cámara Federal de Casación Penal Buenos Aires, 18 December 2014, SAIJ NV9953 [2] (expressing the view that animals are right holders and should be recognized as legal subjects).

Corte Suprema de Justicia 26 July 2017, AHC4806-2017 (MP: Luis Armando Tolosa Villabona). This ruling was later reversed in Corte Suprema de Justicia 16 August 2017, STL12651-2017 (MP: Fernando Castillo Cadena). In January 2020, the Constitutional Court of Colombia decided against granting habeas corpus to the animal in question.

Similar habeas corpus claims on behalf of chimpanzees and elephants, brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, have not been accepted by US courts. See, notably, Tommy v Lavery NY App Div 4 December 2014, Case No 518336.

On the ambiguity of the term ‘animal rights’, see eg Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, ‘Rights’ in Lori Gruen (ed), Critical Terms for Animal Studies (University of Chicago Press 2018) 320; in using the umbrella term ‘animal rights’ without further specifications, it is often left unclear what exactly is meant by ‘rights’. For example, the term may refer to either moral or legal animal rights—or both. Furthermore, in a broad sense, ‘animal rights’ sometimes refers to any kind of normative protection for animals, whereas in a narrow sense, it is often reserved for particularly important and inviolable, human rights-like animal rights. Moreover, some speak of ‘animal rights’ as if they already existed as a matter of positive law, while others use the same term in a ‘manifesto sense’, to refer to potential, ideal rights.

Joel Feinberg, ‘Human Duties and Animal Rights’ in Clare Palmer (ed), Animal Rights (Routledge 2008) 409; the class of potential right holders comprises ‘any being that is capable of holding legal rights, whether or not he/she/it actually holds such rights’. Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 29.

See generally Alon Harel, ‘Theories of Rights’ in Martin P Golding and William A Edmundson (eds), Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (Blackwell 2005) 191ff.

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, ‘Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning’ (1913) 23 Yale LJ 16; Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, ‘Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning’ (1917) 26 Yale LJ 710.

See Hohfeld, ‘Fundamental Legal Conceptions’ (n 15) 717; these Hohfeldian incidents of rights are merely ‘atomic’ units, whereas many common rights are complex aggregates, clusters or ‘molecular rights’ consisting of combinations thereof. ibid 746; Leif Wenar, ‘The Nature of Rights’ (2005) 33 Philosophy & Public Affairs 223, 225, 234.

First-order rights (claims and liberties) directly concern someone’s actual rather than normative conduct, whereas powers and immunities are second-order rights (‘meta-rights’) that concern other legal relations; by prioritising, for the sake of this analysis, first-order rights regarding (in)actions of and towards animals, this is not to say that second-order rights are not important to accompany and bolster the first-order rights of animals. For instance, just as many complex (eg fundamental) rights contain immunities, that is, the freedom from the legal power of another (the disability bearer) to change the immunity holder’s rights, animals’ claims and liberties may be bolstered by immunity rights that protect those first-order rights from being altered, notably voided, by others. For example, one of the most basic rights frequently discussed for animals, the ‘right not to be property’ (Gary L Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (first printed 2000, Temple UP 2007) 93ff), may be explained as an immunity that would strip away the legal powers that currently go along with the state of legal disposability entailed by animals’ property status, and would thus disable human ‘owners’ to decide over animals’ rights. As passive rights, immunities are quite easily conceivable as animal rights, because they are specified by reference to the correlative position, that is, by what the person disabled by the animal’s immunity right cannot legally do (see generally Matthew H Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ in Matthew H Kramer, NE Simmonds and Hillel Steiner, A Debate Over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries (OUP 1998) 22). By contrast, a power refers to one’s control over a given legal relation and entails one’s normative ability to alter another’s legal position (see Hohfeld, ‘Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions’ (n 15) 55). Prima facie , powers may thus seem ill-suited for animals. This is because, unlike passive second-order rights (immunities), powers are active rights that have to be exercised rather than merely enjoyed and, unlike first-order active rights (liberties), powers concern the exercise of legal rather than factual actions and thus require legal rather than mere practical or behavioural agency. Notwithstanding, it may be argued that animals, not unlike children, could hold legal powers (eg powers of enforcement) that are exercisable through human proxies (cf Visa AJ Kurki, ‘Legal Competence and Legal Power’ in Mark McBride (ed), New Essays on the Nature of Rights (Hart Publishing 2017) 46).

For a discussion of Hohfeldian theory in the context of animal rights, see also Wise, ‘Hardly a Revolution’ (n 2) 799ff; Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 96–7; Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational’ (n 2) 6ff.

Joel Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ in Joel Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy (Princeton UP 1980) 159; Hohfeld, ‘Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions’ (n 15) 55.

So far, animal rights theory has largely focussed on negative rights. See critically Donaldson and Kymlicka (n 1) 5ff, 49ff.

cf Wenar, ‘The Nature of Rights’ (n 16) 233.

See Hohfeld, ‘Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions’ (n 15) 55; Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ (n 17) 10.

See eg Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 162; but see Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 41–2 (arguing that it would not be impossible, though ‘cruel and perhaps silly’, to impose legal duties on animals).

A ‘liberty’ is the negation of ‘duty’ and may thus be redescribed as ‘no-duty’.

On the distinction between naked and vested liberties, see HLA Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ in HLA Hart, Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (OUP 1982) 172.

Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 171, 173.

Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 171.

eg Richard L Cupp, ‘Children, Chimps, and Rights: Arguments from “Marginal” Cases’ (2013) 45 Ariz St LJ 1; see also Christine M Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals (OUP 2018) 116ff.

See David Lyons, ‘Rights, Claimants, and Beneficiaries’ (1969) 6 American Philosophical Quarterly 173, 173–4.

Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 42.

Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 42.

In this vein, Tommy v Lavery NY App Div 4 December 2014, Case No 518336, p 4, 6; but see critically New York Court of Appeals, Tommy v Lavery and Kiko v Presti decision of 8 May 2018, motion no 2018-268, concurring opinion Judge Fahey.

For example, the Supreme Court of Colombia explicitly departed from this reciprocity paradigm and held that animals are right holders but not duty bearers. Corte Suprema de Justicia 26 July 2017, AHC4806-2017 (MP: Luis Armando Tolosa Villabona), 14ff; for a refutation of the contractarian reciprocity argument, see also Brief for Philosophers as Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner-Appellant, Nonhuman Rights Project v Lavery 2018 NY Slip Op 03309 (2018) (Nos 162358/15 and 150149/16), 14ff.

See Peters (n 2) 45–6; David Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness: The Legal Personhood and Dignity of Non-Human Animals’ (2009) 25 SAJHR 38, 42–3; Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 163; but see Tommy v Lavery NY App Div 4 December 2014, Case No 518336, 5.

Leif Wenar, ‘The Nature of Claim Rights’ (2013) 123 Ethics 202, 207.

See Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 43.

See Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational’ (n 2) 9.

For an overview, see generally Matthew H Kramer, NE Simmonds and Hillel Steiner, A Debate Over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries (OUP 1998).

Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 183, 188–9.

See Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 30; Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 185.

A problematic corollary of the will theory is its conceptual awkwardness, or inability, to accommodate as right holders not just non-human but also human non-agents, such as infants and the mentally incapacitated. As noted by Hart, ‘Are There Any Natural Rights?’ (n 7) 181, the will conception of rights ‘should incline us not to extend to animals and babies … the notion of a right’; see also Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ (n 17) 69.

As pointed out by van Duffel, neither the will theory nor the interest theory may be a ‘plausible candidate for a comprehensive theory of rights’, and it may be best to assume that both theories simply attempt to capture the essence of different kinds of rights. See Siegfried van Duffel, ‘The Nature of Rights Debate Rests on a Mistake’ (2012) 93 Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104, 105, 117 et passim .

Under the will theory, inalienable rights are not ‘rights’ by definition, as they precisely preclude the right holder’s power to waive the correlative duties. See DN MacCormick, ‘Rights in Legislation’ in PMS Hacker and J Raz (eds), Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of HLA Hart (OUP 1977) 198f; Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ (n 17) 73.

The will theory is primarily modelled on active rights (liberties and powers) that directly facilitate individual autonomy and choice, but is less conclusive with regard to passive rights (claims and immunities) which do not involve any action or exercise of choice by the right holder herself. cf Harel (n 14) 194–5.

Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 190, conceded that the will theory does not provide a sufficient analysis of constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights; legal animal rights, by contrast, are most intelligibly explained as public-law rights held primarily against the state which has correlative duties to respect and protect.

The will theory appears to limit the purpose of rights protection to a narrow aspect of human nature—the active, engaging and self-determining side—while ignoring the passive, vulnerable and needy side. Autonomy is certainly an important good deserving of normative protection, but it is hardly the only such good. See Jeremy Waldron, ‘Introduction’ in Jeremy Waldron (ed), Theories of Rights (OUP 1984) 11; MacCormick, ‘Rights in Legislation’ (n 43) 197, 208.

See Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational’ (n 2) 10ff; for an interest-based approach to animal rights, see eg Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19); Cochrane (n 5) 19ff.

Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 29; MacCormick, ‘Rights in Legislation’ (n 43) 192.

J Raz, ‘Legal Rights’ (1984) 4 OJLS 1, 12; Waldron, ‘Introduction’ (n 46) 12, 14.

See William A Edmundson, An Introduction to Rights (2nd edn, CUP 2012) 97; Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Clarendon Press 1986) 176; Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 167.

See Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 33ff, 39.

Raz, The Morality of Freedom (n 50) 166, 177ff; see also Neil MacCormick, ‘Children’s Rights: A Test-Case for Theories of Right’ in Neil MacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy: Essays in Legal and Political Philosophy (OUP 1982) 159–60.

See RG Frey, Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals (OUP 1980) 78ff; HJ McCloskey, ‘Rights’ (1965) 15 The Philosophical Quarterly 115, 126; but see Tom Regan, ‘McCloskey on Why Animals Cannot Have Rights’ (1976) 26 The Philosophical Quarterly 251.

Harel (n 14) 195; Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 33.

See eg Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 166; Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 39–40; Visa AJ Kurki, ‘Why Things Can Hold Rights: Reconceptualizing the Legal Person’ in Visa AJ Kurki and Tomasz Pietrzykowski (eds), Legal Personhood: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn (Springer 2017) 79–80.

See eg Wenar, ‘The Nature of Claim Rights’ (n 35) 207, 227; Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 54; Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 166.

See also Kurki, ‘Why Things Can Hold Rights’ (n 55) 80.

See Thomas G Kelch, ‘A Short History of (Mostly) Western Animal Law: Part II’ (2013) 19 Animal Law Review 347, 348ff; Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 44ff; in this vein, the Constitutional Court of South Africa (8 December 2016, CCT 1/16 [57]) noted that ‘the rationale behind protecting animal welfare has shifted from merely safeguarding the moral status of humans to placing intrinsic value on animals as individuals ’ (emphasis added); the well-established German concept of ‘ethischer Tierschutz’ expresses this non-anthropocentric, ethical thrust of animal welfare law. See Margot Michel, ‘Law and Animals: An Introduction to Current European Animal Protection Legislation’ in Anne Peters, Saskia Stucki and Livia Boscardin (eds), Animal Law: Reform or Revolution? (Schulthess 2015) 91–2.

1999 Federal Constitution (Bundesverfassung) (CH), Article 120(2) and 2005 Animal Welfare Act (Tierschutzgesetz) (CH), Article 1 and 3(a); 2010 Animal Welfare Act (Tierschutzgesetz) (LI), Article 1; 2018 Animal Welfare Act (Loi sur la protection des animaux) (LU), Article 1; 1977 Experiments on Animals Act (Wet op de dierproeven) (NL), Article 1a; European Parliament and Council Directive 2010/63/EU of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes [2010] OJ L276/33, Recital 12.

See eg Steven M Wise, ‘Legal Rights for Nonhuman Animals: The Case for Chimpanzees and Bonobos’ (1996) 2 Animal Law Review 179, 179; Richard A Epstein, ‘Animals as Objects, or Subjects, of Rights’ in Cass R Sunstein and Martha C Nussbaum (eds), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (OUP 2005) 144ff; Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 91ff; Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational’ (n 2) 18; Court of Appeal of Alberta, Reece v Edmonton (City) , 2011 ABCA 238 [6]; Herrmann v Germany App no 9300/07 (ECtHR, 26 June 2012), separate opinion of Judge Pinto de Albuquerque, 38; Noah v Attorney General HCJ 9232/01 [2002–2003] IsrLR 215, 225, 232, 253.

This type of current legal animal rights will be called ‘animal welfare rights’ in order to indicate their origin in current animal welfare laws.

See eg Cass R Sunstein, ‘Standing for Animals (with Notes on Animal Rights)’ (2000) 47 UCLA Law Review 1333 (claiming that current animal welfare law creates ‘a robust set of animal rights’ or even ‘an incipient bill of rights for animals’. ibid 1334, 1336); Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 43ff, 48–9 (concluding that ‘the existing statutory framework can already be seen to confer certain legal rights upon animals’: 50 fn 61); Jerrold Tannenbaum, ‘Animals and the Law: Property, Cruelty, Rights’ (1995) 62 Social Research 539, 581; Beauchamp (n 2) 207; Wise, ‘Hardly a Revolution’ (n 2) 910ff; this view was endorsed by the Supreme Court of India 7 May 2014, civil appeal no 5387 of 2014 [27] (stating that the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act ‘deals with duties of persons having charge of animals, which is mandatory in nature and hence confer corresponding rights on animals’).

See eg Joel Feinberg, ‘Human Duties and Animal Rights’ in Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (n 19) 193–4 et passim ; Kramer, ‘Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights?’ (n 2) 54; Wenar, ‘The Nature of Claim Rights’ (n 35) 218, 220; Visa AJ Kurki, A Theory of Legal Personhood (OUP 2019) 62–5.

Matthew H Kramer, ‘Legal and Moral Obligation’ in Martin P Golding and William A Edmundson (eds), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (Blackwell 2005) 188.

eg, for Sunstein correlativity seems to run both ways: ‘Not only do rights create duties, but the imposition of a duty also serves to create a right.’ Cass R Sunstein, ‘Rights and Their Critics’ (1995) 70 Notre Dame L Rev 727, 746.

On this objection, see also Kelch, ‘The Role of the Rational’ (n 2) 8–9.

See Lyons (n 29) 176; Waldron, ‘Introduction’ (n 46) 10; critically Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ (n 17) 85ff; Visa AJ Kurki, ‘Rights, Harming and Wronging: A Restatement of the Interest Theory’ (2018) 38 OJLS 430, 436ff.

See eg Beauchamp (n 2) 207; Feinberg, ‘The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations’ (n 19) 161–2, 166; Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 45–6; in this vein, a German high court held that, based on the criminal law justification of necessity (‘rechtfertigender Notstand’), private persons may be authorised to defend the legally protected goods of animals on behalf of the animals, independently of or even against the interests of their owners. OLG Naumburg, judgment of 22 February 2018, case no 2 Rv 157/17, recital II; on why animals need directed rather than indirect duties, see Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (n 2) 350ff.

See also Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 100.

Hart, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 25) 181–2, 190.

MacCormick, ‘Rights in Legislation’ (n 43) 199.

Raz, The Morality of Freedom (n 50) 167, 170f; see also Alan Gewirth, ‘Introduction’ in Alan Gewirth, Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (University of Chicago Press 1982) 14.

See Kramer, ‘Rights Without Trimmings’ (n 17) 40.

Gewirth (n 72) 14.

For the sake of the argument, I am only referring to biological parents.

Raz, The Morality of Freedom (n 50) 166, 180–1.

See MacCormick, ‘Rights in Legislation’ (n 43) 191–2; Raz, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 49) 13–14.

According to some scholars, legal rights exist only when they are enforceable. See eg Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Harvard UP 2011) 405–6 (stating that legal rights are only those that the right holder is entitled to enforce on demand in directly available adjudicative processes).

A significant practical hurdle to the legal recognition of animal rights is that in virtually any legal order, animals are legal objects rather than legal persons. Because legal personhood and right holding are generally thought to be inextricably linked, many jurists refrain from calling the existing legal protections of animals ‘rights’. See critically Kurki, ‘Why Things Can Hold Rights’ (n 55) 71, 85–6.

See generally Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 91ff.

On this, see Kai Möller, ‘Proportionality and Rights Inflation’ in Grant Huscroft, Bradley W Miller and Grégoire Webber, Proportionality and the Rule of Law: Rights, Justification, Reasoning (CUP 2014) 166; Harel (n 14) 197ff; Waldron, ‘Introduction’ (n 46) 14ff.

Ronald Dworkin, ‘Rights as Trumps’ in Waldron, Theories of Rights (n 46) 153.

Bernard E Rollin, ‘The Legal and Moral Bases of Animal Rights’ in HB Miller and WH Willliams (eds), Ethics and Animals (Humana Press 1983) 106.

Tom Regan, ‘The Day May Come: Legal Rights for Animals’ (2004) 10 Animal Law Review 11, 15–16.

Frederick Schauer, ‘A Comment on the Structure of Rights’ (1993) 27 Ga L Rev 415, 429 et passim .

Jeremy Waldron, ‘Rights in Conflict’ in Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–1991 (CUP 1993) 209, 215–16 (emphasis added); see also Frederick Schauer, ‘Rights, Constitutions and the Perils of Panglossianism’ (2018) 38 OJLS 635, 637.

Correlative to Council Regulation (EC) 1099/2009 of 24 September 2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing [2009] OJ L303/1, Article 4 and Annex I.

Correlative to European Parliament and Council Directive 2010/63/EU of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes [2010] OJ L276/33, Article 14(1)(2).

Correlative to 2008 Animal Welfare Ordinance (Tierschutzverordnung) (CH), Article 178a(3).

The permissive character of animal welfare law was highlighted by the Israeli High Court of Justice in a case concerning the force-feeding of geese. Commenting on the ‘problematic’ regulatory language, it noted that the stated ‘purpose of the Regulations is “to prevent the geese’s suffering.” Clearly these regulations do not prevent suffering; at best they minimize, to some extent, the suffering caused’. Noah v Attorney General (n 60) 234–5. See also Shai Lavi, ‘Humane Killing and the Ethics of the Secular: Regulating the Death Penalty, Euthanasia, and Animal Slaughter’ (2014) 4 UC Irvine Law Review 297, 321 (noting the disparity between ‘the resolution to overcome pain and suffering, which exists side-by-side with inhumane conditions that remain unchallenged and are often taken for granted’).

As MacCormick, ‘Children’s Rights’ (n 52) 159, has succinctly put it: ‘Consider the oddity of saying that turkeys have a right to be well fed in order to be fat for the Christmas table’; this is not to minimise the importance of existing animal welfare protections. Even though they are insufficient and weak compared to proper legal rights, that does not mean that they are insignificant. See, on this point, Regina Binder, ‘Animal Welfare Regulation: Shortcomings, Requirements, Perspectives’ in Anne Peters, Saskia Stucki and Livia Boscardin (eds), Animal Law: Reform or Revolution? (Schulthess 2015) 83.

eg correlative to 1972 Animal Welfare Act (Tierschutzgesetz) (DE), § 1 and 17(1).

eg correlative to 2005 Animal Welfare Act (Tierschutzgesetz) (CH), Article 1 and 26(1)(a).

eg derived from Animal Welfare Act 2006 (UK), s 4.

See eg Supreme Court of India 7 May 2014, civil appeal no 5387 of 2014 [62] (extracting from animal welfare law, inter alia , the right to life, to food and shelter, to dignity and fair treatment, and against torture); similarly, Court of Appeal of Alberta, Reece v Edmonton (City) , 2011 ABCA 238, dissenting opinion Justice Fraser [43].

For example, the prima facie right to be free from unnecessary pain and suffering is, in effect, rendered void if virtually any kind of instrumental interest in using animals is deemed necessary and a sufficient justification for its infringement.

See Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (n 2) 346; Harel (n 14) 198; Laurence H Tribe, ‘Ten Lessons Our Constitutional Experience Can Teach Us About the Puzzle of Animal Rights: The Work of Steven M Wise’ (2001) 7 Animal Law Review 1, 2.

See Waldron, ‘Rights in Conflict’ (n 86) 209–11.

See Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 17ff, 109.

Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (n 2) 114.

For Schauer, a certain normative force seems to be constitutive of the concept of rights. He argues that a right exists only insofar as an interest is protected against the sorts of low-level justifications that would otherwise be sufficient to restrict the interest if it were not protected by the right. See Schauer, ‘A Comment on the Structure of Rights’ (n 85) 430 et passim .

In this vein, Sunstein holds that animal welfare laws ‘protect a form of animal rights, and there is nothing in the notion of rights or welfare that calls for much, or little, protection of the relevant interests’. Sunstein, ‘Standing for Animals’ (n 62) 1335.

On the universal basic rights of animals, see eg Donaldson and Kymlicka (n 1) 19ff.

‘Ideal right’ in the sense of ‘what ought to be a positive … right, and would be so in a better or ideal legal system’. Feinberg, Social Philosophy (n 4) 84.

In domestic public law, fundamental or constitutional rights are distinguished from other, simple public (eg administrative) law rights. Likewise, in international law, human rights can be distinguished from other, simple or ordinary international individual rights. See Anne Peters, Beyond Human Rights: The Legal Status of the Individual in International Law (CUP 2016) 436ff.

Indeed, substantively non-fundamental simple animal rights may be quite resistant to being overridden, and may sometimes even be absolute (non-infringeable) rights.

Nonetheless, the usefulness of legal rights is not undisputed within the animal advocacy movement. For an overview of some pragmatic and principled objections against animal rights , see Kymlicka and Donaldson (n 12) 325ff.

See generally Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (n 2); Peters (n 2) 46ff.

Today, animals’ legal protections remain pervasively under-enforced by the competent public authorities as well as practically unenforceable by the affected animals or their human representatives for lack of standing. See eg Sunstein, ‘Standing for Animals’ (n 62) 1334ff; Tribe (n 97) 3.

The link between rights and the legal-operational advantage of standing was famously highlighted by Christopher D Stone, ‘Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects’ (1972) 45 S Cal L Rev 450; see further Cass R Sunstein, ‘Can Animals Sue?’ in Cass R Sunstein and Martha C Nussbaum (eds), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (OUP 2005); Peters (n 2) 47–8.

See Stone (n 110) 458ff; Tribe (n 97) 3.

See eg Constitutional Court of South Africa 8 December 2016, CCT 1/16 (affirming the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ statutory power of private prosecution and to institute legal proceedings in case of animal cruelty offences).

See Frederick Schauer, ‘Proportionality and the Question of Weight’ in Grant Huscroft, Bradley W Miller and Grégoire Webber (eds), Proportionality and the Rule of Law: Rights, Justification, Reasoning (CUP 2014) 177–8.

See generally Saskia Stucki, Grundrechte für Tiere (Nomos 2016) 151ff.

For example, under the Swiss 2005 Animal Welfare Act (Tierschutzgesetz), life itself is not a legally protected good, and the (painless, non-arbitrary) killing of an animal does not therefore require any justification.

See also Noah v Attorney General (n 60) 253–4 (pointing out that balancing different interests is ‘part and parcel of our legal system’).

See generally Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (n 2) 346; Sunstein, ‘Rights and Their Critics’ (n 65) 736–7.

On this threshold-raising conception of rights, see generally Schauer, ‘A Comment on the Structure of Rights’ (n 85) 430; Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard UP 1978) 191–2 (noting that a right cannot justifiably be overridden ‘on the minimal grounds that would be sufficient if no such right existed’).

At present, the overwhelming portion of permissible interferences with animals’ interests can hardly be said to be necessary or proportionate in any real sense of the word. See Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights (n 17) 9, 55.

As noted by Teubner, animal rights ‘create basically defensive institutions. Paradoxically, they incorporate animals into human society in order to create defences against the destructive tendencies of human society against animals’. Gunther Teubner, ‘Rights of Non-Humans? Electronic Agents and Animals as New Actors in Politics and Law’ (2006) 33 Journal of Law and Society 497, 521.

See eg Mark Tushnet, ‘An Essay on Rights’ (1984) 62 Tex L Rev 1363; Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (Free Press 1991); for a modern reformulation of the rights critique, see eg Robin L West, ‘Tragic Rights: The Rights Critique in the Age of Obama’ (2011) 53 Wm & Mary L Rev 713.

See generally Alan Dershowitz, Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (Basic Books 2004) 59ff.

See Sunstein, ‘Rights and Their Critics’ (n 65) 754.

Dershowitz (n 122) 9.

Jeremy Waldron, ‘When Justice Replaces Affection: The Need for Rights’ (1988) 11 Harv JL & Pub Pol’y 625, 629.

See Edmundson, ‘Do Animals Need Rights?’ (n 2) 358.

More generally, the practical need for rights as complementary or compensatory guarantees will vary depending on social context, and may be more immediate and pressing for the disempowered, disenfranchised, marginalised, victimised, vulnerable, disadvantaged or even oppressed portions of society. See generally Patricia J Williams, ‘Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights’ (1987) 22 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 401.

Donaldson and Kymlicka (n 1) 40, 49; see further Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (University of California Press 2004) 330ff, 348–9; Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 69.

See Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 69.

On the aspirational dimension of human rights, see generally Philip Harvey, ‘Aspirational Law’ (2004) 52 Buff L Rev 701.

ibid 717–18; Raz, ‘Legal Rights’ (n 49) 14–15, 19; ‘rights are to law what conscious commitments are to the psyche’. Williams (n 127) 424.

See David Bilchitz, ‘Fundamental Rights as Bridging Concepts: Straddling the Boundary Between Ideal Justice and an Imperfect Reality’ (2018) 40 Hum Rts Q 119, 121ff.

Donaldson and Kymlicka (n 1) 49; see also Gary L Francione, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (Temple UP 2007) 2.

cf Kymlicka and Donaldson (n 12) 331–2.

On the dynamic nature of rights and their generative power, see Raz, The Morality of Freedom (n 50) 171; Waldron, ‘Rights in Conflict’ (n 86) 212, 214.

See David Bilchitz, ‘Does Transformative Constitutionalism Require the Recognition of Animal Rights?’ (2010) 25 Southern African Public Law 267, 291ff.

Bilchitz, ‘Moving Beyond Arbitrariness’ (n 34) 71.

cf Harvey (n 130) 723 (noting that human rights will always remain a ‘work in progress rather than a finished project’); similarly, Kymlicka and Donaldson (n 12) 333.

Stone (n 110) 453.

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1464-3820
• Print ISSN 0143-6503
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Watch CBS News

Harvard study on monkeys reignites ethical debate over animal testing

Updated on: November 21, 2022 / 12:54 PM EST / CBS/AFP

Mother monkeys permanently separated from their newborns sometimes find comfort in plush toys; this recent finding from Harvard experiments has set off intense controversy among scientists and reignited the ethical debate over animal testing.

The paper, "Triggers for mother love," was authored by neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone and appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in September to little fanfare or media coverage.

But once news of the study began spreading on social media, it provoked a firestorm of criticism and eventually a letter to PNAS signed by over 250 scientists calling for a retraction.

Animal rights groups meanwhile recalled Livingstone's past work, which included temporarily suturing shut the eyelids of infant monkeys in order to study the impact on their cognition.

"We cannot ask monkeys for consent, but we can stop using, publishing, and in this case actively promoting cruel methods that knowingly cause extreme distress," wrote Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews, who co-authored the retraction letter.

Hobaiter told AFP she was awaiting a response from the journal before further comment, but expected news soon.

Harvard and Livingstone, for their part, have strongly defended the research.

Livingstone's observations "can help scientists understand maternal bonding in humans and can inform comforting interventions to help women cope with loss in the immediate aftermath of suffering a miscarriage or experiencing a still birth," said Harvard Medical School in a statement .

The school added it was "deeply concerned about the personal attacks directed at scientists who conduct critically important research for the benefit of humanity."

Livingstone, in a separate statement , said: "I have joined the ranks of scientists targeted and demonized by opponents of animal research, who seek to abolish lifesaving research in all animals."

Such work routinely attracts the ire of groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which opposes all forms of animal testing.

In its statement, Harvard Medical School said PETA had published content regarding the study on its website that was "misleading and contains factual inaccuracies."

This controversy has notably provoked strong responses in the scientific community, particularly from animal behavior researchers and primatologists, said Alan McElligot of the City University of Hong Kong's Centre for Animal Health and a co-signer of the PNAS letter.

He told AFP that Livingstone appears to have replicated research performed by Harry Harlow, a notorious American psychologist, from the mid-20th century.

Harlow's experiments on maternal deprivation in rhesus macaques were considered groundbreaking, but may have also helped catalyze the early animal liberation movement.

"It just ignored all of the literature that we already have on attachment theory," added Holly Root-Gutteridge, an animal behavior scientist at the University of Lincoln in Britain.

McElligot and Root-Gutteridge argue the case was emblematic of a wider problem in animal research, in which questionable studies and papers continue to pass institutional reviews and are published in high impact journals.

McElligot pointed to a much-critiqued 2020 paper extolling the efficiency of foot snares to capture jaguars and cougars for scientific study in Brazil.

More recently, experiments on marmosets that included invasive surgeries have attracted controversy.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst team behind the work says studying the tiny monkeys, which have 10-year lifespans and experience cognitive decline in their old age, are essential to better understand Alzheimer's in people.

Opponents argue results rarely translate across species.

When it comes to testing drugs, there is evidence the tide is turning against animal trials.

In September, the Senate passed the bipartisan FDA Modernization Act, which would end a requirement that experimental medicines first be tested on animals before any human trials.

The vast majority of drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials, while new technologies such as tissue cultures, mini organs and AI models are also reducing the need for live animals.

Opponents also say the vast sums of money that flow from government grants to universities and other institutes — $15 billion annually, according to watchdog group White Coat Waste — perpetuate a system in which animals are viewed as lab resources.

"The animal experimenters are the rainmaker within the institutions, because they're bringing in more money," said primatologist Lisa Engel-Jones, who worked as a lab researcher for three decades but now opposes the practice and is a science adviser for PETA.

"There's financial incentive to keep doing what you've been doing and just look for any way you can to get more papers published, because that means more funding and more job security," added Emily Trunnel, a neuroscientist who experimented on rodents and also now works for PETA.

Most scientists do not share PETA's absolutist stance, but instead say they adhere to the "three Rs" framework — refine, replace and reduce animal use.

On Livingstone's experiment, Root-Gutteridge said the underlying questions might have been studied on wild macaques who naturally lost their young, and urged neuroscientists to team up with animal behaviorists to find ways to minimize harm.

"Do I wish we lived in a world where generating this important knowledge were possible without the use of lab animals? Of course!" Livingstone said in her statement . "Alas, we are not there yet."

• Harvard Medical School

More from CBS News

Ketanji Brown Jackson shares her and husband's love story

Georgia suspect's grandmother visited school one day before shooting

What led a former ballerina to fatally shoot her husband?

Reality check: What we get wrong about crime

Animal Law Research

Primary sources: cases, statutes, regulations and treaties, secondary sources: books, articles, news, current awareness, research and advocacy, getting help, credit and cc license.

Animal Law is concerned with the rights and welfare of nonhuman animals, as well as the requirements, responsibilities and liabilities associated with keeping or interacting with them.  Under this umbrella are wild animals as well as animals used for food and research, in entertainment, and as companions, pets or service animals.  This guide contains some research recommendations, highlighting key primary sources, secondary sources and current awareness sources. 

Know that you may not find "animal law" as a discrete topic area in research databases.  Instead, you might look to elements of property law, contract law, tort law, criminal law, environmental law, and agriculture and food law.

"farm animals"  by  lboren2687

Federal legislation

These are among the most researched and cited of animal laws at the federal level:

• Animal Welfare Act (USDA)
• Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (USDA)
• Horse Protection Act (USDA)
• Twenty-Eight Hour Law (USDA)

Congressional Research Service (CRS) and U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports provide additional context on the federal legislation.

• CRS Reports relating to Animal Agriculture Congressional Research Service reports organized by the National Agricultural Law Center
• GAO Reports on the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act GAO 10-203: Actions are Needed to Strengthen Enforcement
• GAO Report on the Animal Welfare Act GAO 10-945: Oversight of Dealers of Random Source Dogs and Cats Would Benefit from Additional Management Information and Analysis (2010)

State legislation

• Massachusetts Law About Animals A compilation of MA laws, regulations, cases and web sources on animal law from the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries.
• NCSL Environmental and Natural Resources State Bill Tracking Database National Conference of State Legislatures tracks environment and natural resource bills introduced in the 50 states, territories and Washington, DC. Search here for wildlife bills, including invasive wildlife species and pollinators.
• National AgLaw Center - State Animal Cruelty Statutes A compilation from the National Agricultural Law Center of the animal cruelty statutes across the 50 states.

Applicable U.S. Government Agencies

• USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
• FSIS (Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service) Part of the USDA.
• Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
• US Dept of Health and Human Services: National Institutes of Health, Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare

Some Relevant International Agreements

• Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals
• Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
• Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCOBANS)

Using Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are a great place to begin if you're new to animal law research, or to consult later in your research for legal interpretation and analysis. To learn more about different types of secondary sources and how best to use them, visit the following guide:

• Secondary Sources: ALRs, Encyclopedias, Law Reviews, Restatements, & Treatises by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 6711 views this year

Selected Treatises and Other Texts

Tips on Finding Materials on Animal Law in Hollis

Try the following Library of Congress subject searches in the HOLLIS online catalog  to find additional materials. You can also substitute another country's name or region of the world (such as "Latin America")  where "United States" appears.

Animal welfare --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Animal rights --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Animal industry --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Animal experimentation --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Laboratory  animals  --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Working  animals  --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Domestic  animals  --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research. ; Animals  in the performing arts --  Law   and   legislation  --  United   States  -- Legal research.

Legal blogs (or "blawgs") are a good way to tap into current conversation.  Here are links to two blog listings:

• Justia Blawg Search - Animal and Dog Law Blawgs
• ABA Journal Animal Law Blog Index

Research and Advocacy

• Harvard Law School - Animal Law & Policy Program Started in 2014, the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at HLS is "Committed to analyzing and improving the treatment of animals through the legal system"
• Animal Law Resource Center A site for current information on animal law and advocacy maintained by the National Anti-Vivisection Society, with assistance from Chicago-area law students.

Contact Us!

  Ask Us!  Submit a question or search our knowledge base.

Chat with us!  Chat   with a librarian (HLS only)

Email: [email protected]

 Contact Historical & Special Collections at [email protected]

  Meet with Us   Schedule an online consult with a Librarian

Hours  Library Hours

Classes  View  Training Calendar  or  Request an Insta-Class

 Text  Ask a Librarian, 617-702-2728

 Call  Reference & Research Services, 617-495-4516

Thank you to Stephen Wiles and Terri Saint-Amour for their work on the initial version of this guide.

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

You may reproduce any part of it for noncommercial purposes as long as credit is included and it is shared in the same manner. 

• Last Updated: Sep 12, 2023 10:46 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/law/animallawresearch

Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

Protection of Animals Through Human Rights: The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights

• Open Access
• First Online: 16 April 2020

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• Tom Sparks 2  

Part of the book series: Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht ((BEITRÄGE,volume 290))

14k Accesses

3 Citations

6 Altmetric

The chapter discusses the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law. It takes as example the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and examine the major trends in the Court’s judgments and admissibility decisions that directly or indirectly concern the rights or welfare of animals. It is concluded that the Court is not indifferent to the welfare of animals, but that animal welfare is instrumentalised: it is understood not as a good in itself, but is instead valued for its implications for human welfare and rights. The chapter then considers the obstacles that the anthropocentrism of the human rights idea and the instrumentalisation of animal concerns present to the use of human rights frameworks to further the development of global animal law, as well as the opportunities that exist in the meeting of these paradigms. It concludes that although the telos of human rights law is different from that of animal law, nevertheless there exist many overlapping concerns within which mutually beneficial interactions are possible.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Similar content being viewed by others

Animal Law: What Is Left to be Said by the Law About Animals

Animal Protection Under Israeli Law

Animal Dignity and the Law: Potential, Problems and Possible Implications

1 introduction.

The institutionalisation of human rights under the regional human rights frameworks has given legal force to an idea already rich in transformative potential. Human rights have become a vital tool in efforts to achieve change both for individuals, and across legal systems. To seek, though, to harness the potential of human rights institutions and discourse to advance animal welfare and animal rights may appear farfetched: one could be forgiven for a certain scepticism concerning the availability of space for animal concerns in this deliberately human-centred area of law and policy. Nevertheless, there are indications of certain modest advances which offer opportunities for animal welfare and rights concerns to be considered within the framework of human rights.

This chapter will consider the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the field of animal law, and will identify the broad themes and trends within that jurisprudence. The ECtHR has only rarely considered questions either directly or tangentially relevant to the protection of animal rights, but there are nonetheless almost thirty relevant judgments and admissibility decisions, Footnote 1 which will be divided thematically (Sects. 2 and 3 ). Footnote 2 Section 4 will then consider the current legal and conceptual barriers to more effective animal protection under the Convention, and will make some tentative remarks on the potential of the ECHR and its Court (as well as human rights frameworks more broadly) to contribute to the development of global standards on animal welfare.

2 The Hunting Cases

In 1998, the first hunting case came before the Court. Steel and Others concerned a series of individuals arrested for the English common law offence of breach of the peace for acts of protest, and who had been subject to binding over orders. Footnote 3 The protest in the case of the first applicant was the disruption of a grouse shooting party and, following her refusal to accept a binding over order, she was jailed for 28 days. Footnote 4 The Court examined the complaint under the article 5 prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of liberty and as an interference with the applicant’s right to free expression (article 10). In finding no violation, it noted that Ms Steel had been subjected to ‘serious interferences with the exercise of her right to freedom of expression’, Footnote 5 but balanced this against the ‘obstruction’ of the ‘lawful pastime’ of the hunting party and the ‘risk of disorder’ arising therefrom, Footnote 6 as well as the ‘importance in a democratic society of maintaining the rule of law and the authority of the judiciary’. Footnote 7 It therefore held that her arrest and detention were not disproportionate interferences with her convention rights. Footnote 8

However, in subsequent cases, the Court has asserted that a moral conviction against hunting is capable of attracting Convention protection, Footnote 9 that animal welfare is a matter of public interest, Footnote 10 and that no Convention protection of the right to hunt exists. Footnote 11 Nevertheless, it remains a mixed practice.

2.1 Hunting Under Article 1 of Protocol 1

The 1999 case of Chassagnou v. France concerned ten applicants, each of whom owned land in areas regulated by the Loi Verdeille . Under that law, all landowners whose holdings are below a certain threshold are required to pool their lands for the purposes of creating an area within which members of the relevant municipal hunting association (ACCA) may freely hunt. The landowners whose property forms a part of the hunting area are automatically members of the local ACCA. Footnote 12 The applicants in the case were all ethically opposed to hunting, and made unsuccessful applications to have their properties removed from the hunting areas, and themselves released from membership of the ACCAs. Footnote 13 The Court found violations of article 11 (freedom of association) and article 1 of Protocol 1 (protection of property) taken separately, and also found violations of each of these provisions when read in conjunction with the protection from discrimination in the application of the convention (article 14).

The Court accepted that the imposition of ACCA membership and the requirement to permit hunting on the applicants’ land pursued a legitimate aim (it commented that ‘it is undoubtedly in the general interest to avoid unregulated hunting and encourage the rational management of game stocks’). Footnote 14 Nevertheless, it recognised that the applicants’ ethical objections were relevant to the assessment of the proportionality of the interference. In relation to article 1 of Protocol 1 it noted that the Government’s characterisation of membership of the ACCA as ‘compensation’ for the loss of the exclusive right to hunt (or, as the case may be, to choose not to hunt) over one’s land ‘is valuable only in so far as all the landowners concerned are hunters or accept hunting.’ Footnote 15 It consequently found that ‘[c]ompelling small landowners to transfer hunting rights over their land so that others can make use of them in a way which is totally incompatible with their beliefs imposes a disproportionate burden’. Footnote 16

Perhaps even more telling was the Court’s 2012 judgment in Chabauty v. France , the most recent in a line of cases brought under article 1 of Protocol 1 by hunters. Footnote 17 The applicant challenged the inclusion of his land in the hunting area, but in this case because he wished privately to rent the right to hunt on his land. Footnote 18 The Court found no violation of article 1 of Protocol 1, read in conjunction with article 14, and in so doing expressly distinguished the case from Chassagnou and its line Footnote 19 as a result of the applicant’s (lack of) ethical objections to hunting. Absent the conflict of conscience, the decision on how hunting should be regulated fell within the state’s margin of appreciation, and no disproportionate interference with the right to property was found. Footnote 20

As the line of cases culminating in Chabauty shows, this is no reification of the right to property. On the contrary, the Court has been inclined to give the state a wide margin of appreciation to regulate hunting. Footnote 21 Nevertheless, ethical objections to hunting are sufficient significantly to narrow the margin of appreciation, and the Court has consistently held that national regulation of hunting must make provision for the rights of opponents of hunting to use their land in ways that accord with their beliefs. Though this is only a small step towards Convention support for animal concerns, it is nevertheless noteworthy both as a protection for animal rights activists, and because it recognises opposition to hunting (and perhaps by implication concern for animals more broadly) as a politico-moral opinion capable of attracting ECHR protection.

2.2 Hunting Under Articles 10 and 11

Articles 10 and 11 have been invoked alongside the right to property as further grounds to find the obligation to accept hunting interferes with the Convention rights of conscientious objectors, Footnote 22 but have also twice been invoked in the separate context of anti-hunting protest. Footnote 23 Here the Court has seemed more reluctant to grant protection: in neither case were the restrictions of the applicants’ acts of protest in defence of animal rights considered to be violations of the Convention.

Articles 10 and 11 were first invoked by an anti-hunting protester in Steel and Others v. UK . Footnote 24 The first applicant claimed violations of articles 10 and 11 of the Convention, but only article 10 was considered, Footnote 25 and no violation was found. Footnote 26 The Court emphasised that the applicant’s protest—which involved placing herself in front of the hunters to prevent them from firing—‘created a danger of serious physical injury to herself and others’ and ‘risked culminating in disorder and violence.’ Footnote 27 It appears, therefore, to be the applicant’s direct action which justified her arrest and imprisonment, a conclusion reinforced by Geert Drieman and Others v. Norway . Here the applicants were arrested and held on remand for actions taken to disrupt a whale hunt in Norway’s exclusive economic zone. Footnote 28 The applicants claimed that their arrest and detention violated articles 10 and 11 of the Convention, and the Court accepted that these actions amounted to an interference. Nevertheless, it decided that the application was manifestly ill founded under article 35(3) of the Convention, and therefore inadmissible. Footnote 29

The decision that the complaint in Drieman was manifestly ill founded and not worthy of further consideration is somewhat surprising, and seems to indicate a hostility to direct action as a form of protest. Though it was accepted by the Court that there had been an interference with articles 10 and 11, it considered it sufficiently obvious that the state’s actions were proportionate that a more detailed assessment was manifestly unnecessary. Its reasoning supports two possible (non-exclusive) interpretations: that the applicants’ aims did not require protection in a democratic society; or that their methods were sufficiently outrageous that states cannot be required to tolerate such conduct in defence of the right to protest. The first, it seems, played a role. The Court noted that the interference pursued the legitimate aim of ‘enforc[ing …] the rules protecting whaling’, Footnote 30 and counterbalanced that remark with a finding that the protest ‘forc[ed] the whalers to abandon their lawful activity’. Footnote 31 It noted, too, that the relevant conduct ‘could not enjoy the same privileged protection under the Convention as political speech or debate on questions of public interests or the peaceful demonstration of opinions on such matters’. Footnote 32 Although this latter comment is more closely tied to the question of methods, taken together these statements indicate the Court’s opinion that the subject of the protest did not attract a high standard of protection. Footnote 33 On the contrary, the Court privileged the economic activity of the whalers over the protest of the animal rights activists. Footnote 34

In its assessment of the methods, too, the Court seemed ill-disposed to the direct action of the protestors. Footnote 35 The comment above contrasting the protestors’ actions with ‘peaceful demonstration of opinions’ on questions of public interest should be read alongside the characterisation of those actions as ‘a form of coercion’, and ‘an ultimatum’. Footnote 36 Yet unlike in Steel and Others there was no suggestion that the applicants’ protests had created a danger to the whalers or to any other person Footnote 37 ; unlike in Kudrevičius and Others the disruption caused to ‘activities lawfully carried out by others’ did not affect a large number of people, but instead only a small group Footnote 38 ; and unlike in Taranenko v. Russia the protests did not result in violence. Footnote 39 Nevertheless, the Court in Drieman directly contrasted its approach in cases involving ‘the peaceful demonstration of opinions on [matters of public interest]’ (in which a narrow margin of appreciation is appropriate) with the facts before it, where it found that ‘[c]ontracting States must be allowed a wide margin of appreciation in their assessment of the necessity of taking measures to restrict such conduct.’ Footnote 40

3 Animal Welfare and Freedom of Speech

Claims under article 10 in the context of hunting have come in parallel to article 11, in cases concerning protest. There, the articles were considered to raise the same issues. Footnote 41 Freedom of speech has also been invoked separately from the freedom of association, however; both in relation to reporting on hunting, Footnote 42 and publications by animal rights groups. Footnote 43

The first animal welfare case to raise article 10 outwith the context of protest was Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas v. Norway . The case was brought by the Bladet Tromsø newspaper and its editor, following a successful defamation suit against them for articles which reported allegations by a seal hunt inspector of cruel and illegal practices. Footnote 44 Defamation proceedings were brought by the hunters concerned sequentially against the inspector, Bladet Tromsø and its editor, and (unsuccessfully) against several other media outlets. The Court began its assessment with its familiar assertion of the high importance of the press, and declared that ‘[i]n cases such as the present one the national margin of appreciation is circumscribed by the interest of democratic society in enabling the press to exercise its vital role of ‘public watchdog’ in imparting information of serious public concern’. Footnote 45 It held too that ‘in order to determine whether the interference was based on sufficient reasons which rendered it ‘necessary’, regard must be had to the public-interest aspect of the case.’ Footnote 46 This it found to be high, referring to the ‘legitimate public concern’ with the subject matter, Footnote 47 and noting that it was in actuality ‘of evident concern to the local, national and international public’. Footnote 48

The Court’s strong declaration that animal welfare and the exposure of cruelty to animals is a legitimate matter of public interest is, in the author’s opinion, more significant than the ultimate finding that article 10 had been violated in the circumstances of the case. Footnote 49 The Court has been loath to hold that restrictions on journalistic speech on matters of public interest can be justified except under circumstances of clear abuse, and has repeatedly held that the state’s margin of appreciation will be very narrow where the freedom of the press is concerned. Footnote 50 That article 10 was violated was an unsurprising conclusion, therefore, once the finding had been made that a debate on animal cruelty was a matter of public interest: it was the combination of public interest and journalistic speech which was important for the outcome. The same can be said of the subsequent article 10 cases concerning aspects of animal welfare that have come before the Court: for present purposes the ultimate decisions are of secondary importance, being determined primarily by factors not directly relevant to animal welfare. That is significant in itself, however, insofar as it demonstrates that the role given to animal welfare concerns in article 10 cases is a narrow one, limited to determination of the appropriate standard of review.

In the years following Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas the Court has ruled on the application of article 10 in relation to animal welfare in six cases, each of which concerned the legality of restrictions on communications by animal welfare groups either (as in VgT Nos. I&II and ADI v. UK ) relating to the media available to them, Footnote 51 or (as in Steel and Morris , PETA Deutschland and Tierbefreier e.V. ) the content of those communications. Footnote 52 In each case the Court reiterated its finding that animal welfare and animal rights are ‘topics of general concern’, Footnote 53 and ‘questions of public interest’. Footnote 54 Accordingly, it has repeatedly noted that the margin of appreciation due to states in determining to what extent such communications can be restricted is narrow, Footnote 55 and has even gone so far as to suggest that the standard of protection appropriate to campaigning groups working on such matters is similar (although perhaps not identical) to that applicable to journalists. Footnote 56

4 Obstacles and Opportunities

Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear from the Courts’ reasoning in these and other cases that what is protected is the interest that humans may feel in the welfare and suffering of animals , and not the welfare of animals as an end in itself. The distinction is illustrated particularly clearly in PETA Deutschland v. Germany . That case concerned an advertising campaign which juxtaposed images of mass farming methods with Nazi-era concentration camps, together with text which claimed similarities between the treatment of holocaust victims and treatment of animals in the modern meat industry. One such caption ran ‘where animals are concerned everyone becomes a Nazi’ (‘[w]o es um Tiere geht, wird jeder zum Nazi’). Footnote 57 An injunction was requested by Jewish community leaders, and granted by the domestic Courts on the basis that ‘the debasement of concentration camp victims was […] exploited in order to militate for better accommodation of laying hens and other animals.’ Footnote 58 Though the courts at all levels noted that the campaign was not malicious in the sense that PETA did not intend to minimise the suffering of holocaust victims nor to violate their human dignity, they nevertheless concluded that the comparison was ‘banalising’, and that ‘the Basic Law drew a clear distinction between human life and dignity on the one side and the interests of animal protection on the other’. The injunction was therefore justified on the basis that the ‘content of the campaign affected the plaintiffs’ personality rights.’ Footnote 59

The ECtHR unanimously agreed. Though its judgment noted the particular context of Jews living in Germany and pointed out ‘that courts in other jurisdictions might address similar matters in a different way’, Footnote 60 it accepted that the decision of the domestic courts was reasonable. In coming to that finding it agreed that the posters did not ‘aim to debase the depicted concentration camp inmates, as the pictures merely implied that the suffering inflicted on the depicted humans and animals was equal.’ Footnote 61 Nevertheless, and revealingly, it characterised the treatment of the concentration camp victims as ‘instrumentalisation’ in the ‘interests of animal protection’. Footnote 62 This theme was taken up—and taken further—by Judge Zupančič in a concurring opinion joined by Judge Spielmann. There they asked

[W]hether reasonable [people] could indeed or could not differ on the utterly disgraceful and unacceptable comparison between pigs on the one hand and the inmates of Auschwitz or some other concentration camp, on the other hand. Footnote 63

[W]hen human beings in their utter suffering and indignity are, as here, compared to hens and pigs for the lesser purpose of protecting otherwise legitimate advancement of animal rights, we are no longer in the position to maintain that the human beings seen in these pictures are treated as an end in themselves. […] If their image is so instrumentalised, little is left of their human dignity[.] Footnote 64

Though these statements were seemingly too strongly put for the majority of the Court, the underlying reasoning appears to be the same. Certainly, Judge Zupančič is correct in pointing out that using the picture of the concentration camp victims simply as a comparator does not accord with the Kantian imperative that individuals be treated as ends in themselves, but it is worth pausing to consider whether a comparison of holocaust victims with—for example—victims of modern-day international crimes would have attracted the same condemnation. That would be no less of an instrumentalisation, but it seems clear that for Judges Zupančič and Spielmann (even if not for the domestic courts) the context of the comparison was a significant part of the harm the campaign committed. It may be that it was not instrumentalisation per se that was objectionable, but rather instrumentalisation of the human in service of the animal.

Nor is that conclusion—or its counterpart that the animal may be instrumentalised in service of the human—a surprising position for the Court to reach. It is almost unnecessary to say, for example, that the Court has no objection in principle to the use of animals as game, Footnote 65 for medical experimentation, Footnote 66 or for food. Footnote 67 In some circumstances animal welfare concerns take second place to facilitation of religious practice. Footnote 68 Given a direct conflict between animal life and human safety and wellbeing the Court unsurprisingly privileges human safety. Footnote 69 The Court should not be criticised for these positions: to adopt the contrary finding on any of these points would take the Court radically beyond the understanding of the rights involved prevalent in the Council of Europe states, and thus well beyond its remit to ‘interpret[the Convention] in the light of present-day conditions and of the ideas prevailing in democratic States’. Footnote 70 The Court generally cites Tyrer v. UK as the source of this principle, which casts the Convention as a ‘living instrument’. Footnote 71 Although this means that standards of protection may develop, Footnote 72 the Court has also explicitly arrived at the corollary conclusion that it should not go beyond these evolving standards. Footnote 73 It is therefore not at liberty to find that hunting, eating or experimenting on animals is improper even if it were inclined to do so: every Council of Europe state accepts these practices within certain limits, and nor is there a consensus even among animal activists and scholars on their (im)propriety. Footnote 74

Although the obligation—both precedential and of prudence—not to stray beyond the understanding of the Convention rights among the states forecloses certain radical steps in using the ECHR to protect animal welfare, the ‘living instrument’ formulation also offers the promise that future developments may be incorporated into the Convention’s protections. Judge Pinto de Albuquerque’s separate opinion in Hermann v. Germany in 2012 gives an indication of the mechanism through which this could take place. Footnote 75 Animals, Pinto de Albuquerque argued, are protected under the ECHR in two ways. First, they may be property within the definition of article 1 of Protocol 1. Footnote 76 More importantly, they may be protected ‘as beings in themselves […] as part of a healthy, balanced and sustainable environment’, Footnote 77 under the umbrella of the article 8 obligation to ‘avoid acts and activities that could have detrimental consequences for public health and the environment’. Footnote 78 Pinto de Albuquerque finds ‛“clear and uncontested evidence of a continuing international trend” in favour of the protection of animal life and welfare [which] is reflected in the application of the Convention.’ Footnote 79 He argues that the Court should reject both the ‘commodification’ of animals and extensive conceptions of human-like animal personality, instead embracing a ‘qualified speciesism which builds upon a responsible anthropocentrism.’ Footnote 80 He concludes that recognising the moral differences between humans and animals ‘does not prevent us from acknowledging the […] existence of basic comparable interests between humans and other animals and therefore the need to safeguard certain ‘animal rights’, metaphorically speaking, in a similar way to human rights.’ Footnote 81 The mechanism through which this should be achieved is not the grant of legal personality to animals to raise claims before the Court (nor upon human ‘representatives’ to do so), Footnote 82 but rather through the obligation of states to realise the human right to a healthy environment. Footnote 83

While there is much here that is attractive, there remain problems with the application of the approach Pinto de Albuquerque proposes, and flaws in the approach itself. To begin with application, it is increasingly accepted that a healthy environment is an aspect of human rights. Footnote 84 As yet, however, it is unclear whether the ECHR has the potential adequately to integrate this idea into its provisions. Prima facie, environmental harms are more closely connected to the protection of social and economic rights than the primarily civil and political rights of the ECHR. The disconnect is clear in Kyrtatos v. Greece , in which the Court was asked to decide that the illegal destruction of a wetland habitat next to the applicants’ house was a violation of article 8. The Court chose not to do so, holding that the applicants had not demonstrated that the effect of the environmental degradation on them ‘directly affect[ed] their own rights under article 8’. Footnote 85 The Court reached that conclusion by six votes to one, with Judge Zagrebelsky the only dissenter. It can be speculated then, that although it would be possible for environmental degradation to have sufficiently negative effects to amount to a breach of article 8, such a finding is likely to be made only where there is a measureable negative effect on individuals’ health or some other equally weighty aspect of their lives. By contrast, and despite that it materially affected their quality of life, ‘the Court [did not] accept that the interference with the conditions of animal life in the swamp constitute[d] an attack on the private or family life of the applicants.’ Footnote 86 If the precedent set in Kyrtatos stands, then, a harm to animal life and the wider environment will have to produce very substantial negative impacts on individuals before it will be possible to assimilate these harms under article 8. Footnote 87

Yet there are potential problems, too, with the idea of responsible anthropocentricism as a theoretical lens through which to interpret the ECHR in ways conducive to the protection of animal welfare, in that it remains—obviously—anthropocentric. Footnote 88 Of course, one could hardly expect the ECtHR to move to a position beyond ‘responsible anthropocentricism’ without alteration of the Convention or a substantial leap in its interpretation. Such an interpretive move would, in theory, be possible: indeed, there is nothing in the text of the convention that would prevent it from being extended to apply to (some) animals. Despite its title (Convention for the Protection of Human Rights; Convention de sauvegarde des droits de l’homme ), the personal scope of the Convention as defined by its first article does not refer to ‘humans’ but rather to ‘everyone’ and ‘toute personne’, both terms which seem amenable to a legal rather than scientific definition. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the Court is able to go this far, Footnote 89 and that uncertainty serves to make the anthropocentrism problem and its study more urgent. If anthropocentricism is a barrier to the formulation of meaningful principles to undergird animal welfare (let alone animal rights), then one must necessarily conclude that the human rights framework cannot contribute to the development of global animal law. Footnote 90 That question has been discussed elsewhere (and is taken up in several of the other contributions to this volume), and is too large and complex adequately to be discussed here. Footnote 91 However, in the present author’s opinion, this proposition is not correct. On the contrary, human rights law can meaningfully contribute to the development of global animal law. Though it may be that global animal law will eventually need to separate itself from human rights law if it is to realise its potential, in its early stages of development there are numerous opportunities for synergistic interactions with frameworks such as the ECHR.

This is the argument forcefully and convincingly made by Connor Gearty in the wider context of environmental protection. Footnote 92 Gearty begins by acknowledging that environmental concerns (and, for our purposes, animal welfare and rights) do not sit easily alongside the human rights framework’s proud anthropocentricism:

The subject of human rights is, as it declares for all to see in the way that it describes itself, a field that is concerned not only with humans but also with the rights that flow from being human, rather than from being anything else[.] Footnote 93

Human rights law exemplifies and makes explicit a sin Anne Peters identifies more generally, that ‘the law as it stands mirrors and reifies a human-animal divide’. Footnote 94 Yet Gearty argues that human rights has the potential to support environmental protection both through the protection of environmental activism (‘protecting the messenger’), Footnote 95 and by offering a vocabulary of empowerment that activists can use.

It speaks meaningfully across the whole spectrum of a community, from the weak across to the powerful, deploying the convictions of the latter—rooted in the battles of the past—to force recognition of the need for similar struggles today. […] This chameleonism is often a source of frustration for sure, but it is what gives the idea of human rights the power that it undeniably enjoys in the world today. Footnote 96

Though human rights are intrinsically anthropocentric, the human rights project is a legally-embedded socio-linguistic mobilisation of empathy for the other. Footnote 97 Using the language of human rights carries with it the historical experience of the manifold struggles for justice that have been fought under its banner. Embedded in the framework are the memories of many claims once bitterly contested as radical oppositions to an entrenched power-structure which have succeeded in breaking into the mainstream consciousness, have overturned centuries of social practice, or have been codified as a minimum standard of positive morality in international declarations and conventions. The language, experience, and historical legitimacy-claim of human rights can be powerful tools in the campaign for animal (and wider environmental) rights, notwithstanding the inevitable friction between zoo- and anthropos-centrism.

5 Final Thoughts

Although that friction is more pronounced (and the radical discourse more constrained) within human rights viewed as a legal framework rather than a socio-political project, nevertheless many of the same arguments hold true. There are barriers to the direct treatment of animal concerns by human rights fora as a result of personal and material limitations on their scope of jurisdiction, but the case-law of the ECtHR demonstrates that there remain opportunities to bring animal concerns under the umbrella of human welfare. This does, it is true, raise moral questions, in particular the “speaking for the other’ problem’, as Catharine MacKinnon has pointed out. Footnote 98 Animal law remains human law, and it aspires towards a human interpretation of what ‘animal welfare’ looks like. Yet though the interpretative divide is deeper, Peters is clearly correct to ask where the differences lie between speaking for animals and speaking for humans who lack legal capacity (Peters’ example is children). Footnote 99 Arguably in the case of animals the situation is more problematic: where we raise children’s concerns before Courts we do so for the benefit of the children involved, while animal rights at present flow from human rights only as a corollary of human concerns. The former is a case of speaking for, with all the moral difficulties that flow from that; the latter is an example of instrumentalisation. Yet there is also a zone of confluence, Footnote 100 in which human and animal wellbeing and rights coincide insofar as it can be demonstrated that protecting the one benefits the other. Footnote 101 Peters uses the phrase ‘liberté, égalité, animalité’ as ‘a reminder that humans need legal protection not least on account of their animal nature, their physical vulnerability and their “nakedness”, which they share with all other animals.’ Footnote 102 It is indeed a salutary reminder that the human/animal divide is bridged in many respects, including the ‘vital interests’ of both groups. Footnote 103 Articulating those confluences within the language of the ECHR and other human rights frameworks has the potential to catalyse the development of animal welfare as a sub-genre of the international human rights story, as well as to provide norms, ideas and impetuses which will cross into other jurisdictions and disciplines, and scholars should now take up this task. It is in these interactions that global animal law is growing and will continue to grow, Footnote 104 and this brief examination of the ECtHR suggests that human rights law has a meaningful contribution to make to that process.

The relevant cases are, in chronological order, ECHR, Steel and Others v. UK , Chamber Judgment of 23 September 1998, Application No. 24838/94; ECHR, Chassagnou and Others v. France , Grand Chamber Judgment of 29 April 1999, Applications Nos. 25088/94, 28331/95, and 28443/95; ECHR, Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas v. Norway , Grand Chamber Judgment of 20 May 1999, Application No. 21980/93; ECHR, Hashman and Harrup v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 25 November 1999, Application No. 25594/94; ECHR, Geert Drieman and Others v. Norway , Third Section Decision on Admissibility of 4 May 2000, Application No. 33678/96; ECHR, Cha’are Shalom Ve Tsedek v. France , Grand Chamber Judgment of 27 June 2000, Application No. 27417/95; ECHR, Verein gegen Tierfabriken v. Switzerland , Second Section Judgment of 28 June 2001, Application No. 24699/94 ( VgT No. I ); ECHR, Kyrtatos v. Greece , First Section Judgment of 22 May 2003, Application No. 41666/98; ECHR, Piippo v. Sweden , Second Section Partial Decision on Admissibility of 7 December 2004, Application No. 70518/01; ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK , Fourth Section Judgment of 15 February 2005, Application No. 68416/01; ECHR, Piippo v. Sweden , Second Section Decision on Admissibility of 21 March 2006, Application No. 70518/01; ECHR, Schneider v. Luxembourg , Second Section Judgment of 10 July 2007, Application No. 2113/04; ECHR, Baudinière and Vauzelle v. France , Third Section Decision on Admissibility of 6 December 2007, Application Nos. 25708/03 and 25719/03; ECHR, Nilsson v Sweden , Third Section Decision on Admissibility of 26 February 2008, Application No. 11811/05; ECHR, Verein gegen Tierfabriken Schweiz v. Switzerland (No.2) , Grand Chamber Judgment of 30 June 2009, Application No. 32772/02 ( VgT No. II ); ECHR, Friend and Others v. United Kingdom , Fourth Section Decision on Admissibility of 24 November 2009, Application Nos. 16072/06 and 27809/08; ECHR, Jakóbski v. Poland , Fourth Section Judgment of 7 December 2010, Application No. 18429/06; ECHR, Berü v. Turkey , Second Section Judgment of 11 January 2011, Application No. 47304/07; ECHR, Georgel and Georgeta Stoicescu v. Romania , Third Section Judgment of 26 July 2011, Application No. 9718/03; ECHR, ASPAS and Lasgrezas v. France , Fifth Section Judgment of 22 September 2011, Application No. 29953/08; ECHR, Herrmann v. Germany , Grand Chamber Judgment of 26 June 2012, Application No. 9300/07; ECHR, Chabauty v. France , Grand Chamber Judgment of 4 October 2012, Application No. 57412/08; ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany , Fifth Section Judgment of 8 November 2012, Application No. 43481/09; ECHR, Animal Defenders International (ADI) v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 22 April 2013, Application No. 48876/08; ECHR, Tierbefreier e.V. v. Germany , Fifth Section Judgment of 16 January 2014, Application No. 45192/09.

A small number of cases fall into neither category, and are briefly mentioned in section three.

ECHR, Steel and Others v. UK (n. 1), paras. 6-24.

Ibid., para. 13.

Ibid., para. 103.

Ibid., para. 107.

ECHR, Chassagnou v. France (n. 1), para. 114; see also ECHR, Schneider v. Luxembourg (n. 1), para. 80; ECHR, Herrmann v. Germany (n. 1), para. 80.

ECHR, Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas (n. 1), paras. 63-64, 73; see also ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK (n. 1), para. 88; ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), para. 47; ECHR, VgT No. II (n. 1), para. 92.

ECHR, Chassagnou v. France (n. 1), para. 113; see also ECHR, Nilsson v. Sweden (n. 1), 11.

ECHR, Chassagnou v. France (n. 1), paras. 13-15, 46.

Ibid., paras. 16-18, 23-24, 28-30.

Ibid., para. 79.

Ibid., para. 82.

Ibid., para. 85. The Court has subsequently confirmed Chassagnou in ECHR, Schneider v. Luxembourg (n. 1); and ECHR, Herrmann v. Germany (n. 1).

ECHR, Piippo v. Sweden (Second Decision, 2006) (n. 1); ECHR, Nilsson v. Sweden (n. 1); ECHR, Baudinière and Vauzelle v. France (n. 1); and ECHR, Chabauty v. France (n. 1).

Ibid., paras. 12-17.

ECHR, Chassagnou v. France (n. 1); ECHR, Schneider v. Luxembourg (n. 1); ECHR, Herrmann v. Germany (n. 1).

Ibid., paras. 41-50, 56-57.

Çoban notes that the Court’s general approach to article 1 of Protocol 1 has been to ‘favour[] the public interest rather than individual rights.’ Çoban, Protection of Property Rights 2004 , 257.

ECHR, Chassagnou v. Franc e (n. 1), para. 103, 117; ECHR, Schneider v. Luxembourg (n. 1), paras. 82-83.

ECHR, Steel and Others v. UK (n. 1); ECHR, Drieman and Others v. Norway (n. 1).

ECHR, Steel and Others v. UK (n. 1), paras. 6-13. See also above, sec. 2.1 .

The Court decided that it was not necessary to consider the application of article 11 because the complaint did not ‘raise[] any issues not already examined in the context of article 10’: ECHR, Steel and Others v. UK (n. 1), para. 113.

Ibid., paras. 102-107.

Ibid., para. 105.

ECHR, Drieman and Others v. Norway (n. 1), 2.

The Court has implied in a series of cases that there is a hierarchy within articles 10 and 11, wherein certain subjects (those that are “political” or in the “public interest”) will receive a higher level of protection than others. See ECHR, Sunday Times v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 26 April 1979, Application No. 6538/74, 29-30; ECHR, Lingens v. Austria , Grand Chamber Judgment of 8 July 1986, Application No. 9815/82, paras. 34-47; ECHR, Thorgeirson v. Iceland , para. 60-70; Chamber Judgment of 25 June 1992, Application No. 13778/88, paras. 55-70; ECHR, Jersild v. Denmark , Grand Chamber Judgment of 23 September 1994, Application No. 15890/89, paras. 25-37; and contrast ECHR, Handyside v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 7 December 1976, Application No. 5493/72, paras. 42-59; ECHR, Wingrove v. UK , Chamber Judgment of 25 November 1996, Application No. 17419/90, paras. 52-64, esp. 58; ECHR, Vereinigung Bildender Künstler v. Austria , First Section Judgment of 25 January 2007, Application No. 68354/01, paras. 26-39.

In this connection, it is particularly relevant that the Court observed that the protest had been taking place unimpeded for one month, and only when the protestors’ activities interfered with the hunt did the authorities take action. See ECHR, Drieman and Others v. Norway (n. 1), 10.

Fenwick et al consider that the findings in Steel and Others and the cases that followed it demonstrate that direct action protests engage article 11 in principle: Helen Fenwick/Gavin Phillipson/Alexander Williams, Texts, Cases and Materials on Public Law and Human Rights (4th ed., Abingdon: Routledge 2017 ), 999. However, the Court has tended to apply a very wide margin of appreciation in such cases, characterising direct action as ‘reprehensible’, and implying that it cannot be considered wholly ‘peaceful’ even when no violent action is taken: Kudrevičius and Others v. Lithuania , Grand Chamber Judgment of 15 October 2015, Application No. 37553/05, paras. 173-174; see also Steel and Others (n. 1); G. v. Germany , Decision by the Commission on Admissibility of 6 March 1989, Application No. 13079/87; Lucas v. UK , Fourth Section Decision on Admissibility of 18 March 2003, Application No. 39013/02; Baracco v. France , Fifth Section Judgment of 5 March 2009, Application No. 31684/05. Nevertheless the Court has held that the margin it grants in such cases ‘although wide, is not unlimited’ (para. 86), and it has been willing to find that a certain level of criminal sanction (in Taranenko three years’ imprisonment) is disproportionate to the aim of preventing illegal protest: ECHR, Taranenko v. Russia , First Section Judgment of 15 May 2014, Application No. 19554/05, paras.81-97.

ECHR, Steel v. Others (n. 1), para. 103.

ECHR, Kudrevičius and Others v. Lithuania (n. 35), paras. 142-184, esp. 169-175.

ECHR, Taranenko v. Russia (n. 35).

ECHR, Steel and Others (n. 1), paras. 112-113; ECHR, Drieman (n. 1), 7-10.

ECHR, Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas (n. 1).

ECHR, VgT Nos. I&II (n. 1); ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK (n. 1); ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1); ECHR, ADI v. UK (n. 1); and ECHR, Tierbefreier e.V. v. Germany (n. 1).

ECHR, Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas (n. 1), paras. 6-38.

Ibid., para. 59 .

Ibid., para. 62.

Ibid., para. 64.

Ibid., para. 63.

Ibid., para. 73.

See, for example, the statement by the Court in Thorgeirson that the press has a ‘pre-eminent role […] in a State governed by the rule of law’: ECHR, Thorgeirson v. Iceland (n. 33), para. 63. See further, among others, Sunday Times v. UK (n. 33), 33; ECHR, Lingens v. Austria (n. 33), para. 13; ECHR, Oberschlick v. Austria , Grand Chamber Judgment of 23 May 1991, Application No. 1162/85, para. 58; ECHR, Observer and Guardian v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 26 November 1991, Application No. 13585/88, para. 59; ECHR, Jersild v. Denmark (n. 33), para. 31; ECHR, Goodwin v. UK , Grand Chamber Judgment of 27 March 1996, Application No. 17488/90, para. 39. These principles have been reaffirmed in the recent case of ECHR, Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy and Satamedia Oy v. Finland , Grand Chamber Judgment of 27 June 2017, Application No. 931/13, paras. 124-128.

ECHR, VgT No. I (n. 1), paras. 8-23; VgT No. II (n. 1), paras. 12-27; ECHR, ADI v. UK (n. 1), paras. 8-33.

ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK (n. 1), paras. 8-36; ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), paras. 6-19; ECHR, Tierbefreier e.V. v. Germany (n. 1), paras. 5-21.

ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK (n. 1), para. 88.

ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), para. 47. See also ECHR, VgT No.II (n. 1), para. 92.

In VgT No. I the Court noted that ‘in the present case the extent of the margin of appreciation is reduced, since what is at state is not a given individual’s purely “commercial” interests, but [their] participation in a debate affecting the general interest’: ECHR, VgT No. I (n. 1), para. 71. See also ECHR, ADI v. UK (n. 1), para. 104.

ECHR, Steel and Morris v. UK (n. 1), para. 89, [references omitted].

ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), para. 7.

Ibid., para. 11.

Ibid., paras. 17-18; see also Landgericht Berlin, Judgment of 18 March 2004, 27 O 207/04; Landgericht Berlin 22 April 2004, 27 O 207/04; Kammergericht, Judgment of 30 July 2004, 9 U 118/04; Kammergericht, Judgment of 27 August 2004, 9 U 118/04; Landesgericht Berlin, Judgment of 2 December 2004, 27 O 676/04; Kammergericht, Judgment of 25 November 2005, 9 U 15/05; Bundesverfassungsgericht, Judgment of 20 February 2009, 1 BvR 2266/04, 1 BvR 2620/05.

ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), para. 49.

Ibid., para. 48.

Concurring Opinion of Judge Zupančič, Joined by Judge Spielmann, ECHR, PETA Deutschland v. Germany (n. 1), 16-18, at para. 5.

Ibid., paras. 14-15. A similar argument in the academic sphere is made by Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman, who argue that the term “animal liberation” ‘has the effect of trivializing […] real liberation movements, putting them on a level with what cannot but appear as a bizarre exaggeration’: Francis/Norman, ‘Some Animals are More Equal than Others’ 1978, 527. Kymlicka and Donaldson respond powerfully to such arguments: Kymlicka/Donaldson, ‘Animal Rights, Multiculturalism, and the Left’ 2014 , 116-135. A historical analysis of the human/animal dichotomy is given by Anna Becker in her contribution to this volume.

See ECHR, Chassagnou v. France (n. 1), and the cases that followed it.

ECHR, Tierbefreier e.V. v. Germany (n. 1).

ECHR Cha’are Shalom (n. 1); ECHR, Jakóbski v. Poland (n. 1).

ECHR Cha’are Shalom (n. 1). Importantly, though, the Court held here that the state retained a margin of appreciation to decide on what basis permits to slaughter animals in accordance with religious requirements (in this case the strict requirements to qualify as glatt kosher) would be granted in order to, among other things, enable it to protect public health and animal welfare (paras. 76-77, 84). Provided that meat prepared according to the requirements of one’s religion is available, article 9 does not extend to a right to slaughter one’s meat oneself (paras. 80-82).

ECHR, Stoicescu v. Romania (n. 1).

ECHR, Khamtokhu and Aksenchik v. Russia , Grand Chamber Judgment of 24 January 2017, Application Nos. 60367/08 and 961/11, para. 73 [references omitted].

ECHR, Tyrer v. UK , Chamber Judgment of 25 April 1978, Application No. 5856/72, para. 31.

ECHR, Khamtokhu and Aksenchik (n. 70), para. 73; see also ECHR, Selmoui v. France , Grand Chamber Judgment of 28 July 1999, Application No. 25803/94, para. 101.

ECHR, Khamtokhu and Aksenchik (n. 70), para. 74

For different perspectives on these questions see Cochrane, Animal Rights without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations 2012 ; Taylor, ‘Whiter Rights? Animal Rights and the Rise of New Welfarism’ 1999 , 27-41; Harrop, ‘Climate Change, Conservation and the Place for Wild Animal Welfare in International Law’ 2011 , 441-462. Outside academia, compare the remit of the Animal Welfare Council ( http://www.animalwelfarecouncil.org/?page_id=9 ), with PETA ( https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-animal-rights-and-animal-welfare/ ).

Partly Concurring and Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Pinto de Albuquerque, ECHR, Herrmann v. Germany (n. 1), 32-49. Similar themes were also discussed in the earlier Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Zagrebelsky, ECHR, Kyrtatos v. Greece (n. 1), 14-15.

Ibid., 33 [references omitted].

Ibid., 36, citing ECHR, Goodwin v. UK (n. 50), para. 85.

Opinion of Pinto de Albuquerque (n. 75), 37 [emphasis and references omitted].

Ibid., 37 [references omitted].

The ability of animals to appear as “persons” before the courts is discussed below, at note 89.

Opinion of Pinto de Albuquerque (n. 75), 38.

See, for example, the recent framework principles prepared by John Knox in his capacity as special rapporteur: Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment’, 24 January 2018, UN Document No. A/HRC/37/59. Knox suggests two parallel provisions as his first and second framework principles, that ‘[s]tates should ensure a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil human rights’, and that ‘[s]tates should respect, protect and fulfil human rights in order to ensure a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment’ (page 7).

ECHR, Kyrtatos v. Greece (n. 1), para. 53.

This conclusion is broadly supported by Natalia Kobylarz’s study of the Court’s case-law on wider aspects of environmental protection. While the Court has been able to provide relief under the ECHR in a number of environmental damage scenarios, it remains necessary to show an immediate link to a concrete harm. See Natalia Kobylarz, ‘The European Court of Human Rights: An Underrated Forum for Environmental Litigation’, in European Environmental Law Forum, Sustainable Management of Natural Resources – Legal Approaches and Instruments ( forthcoming ), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3178983 , accessed 30/05/2018.

On this idea see Redgwell, ‘Life, The Universe And Everything’ 1996 , 71-87, esp. 75-79; Shelton, ‘Environmental Rights’ 2001 , 190; Bulto, ‘The Environment and Human Rights’ 2014 , 1015-1030; de Lucia, ‘Beyond Anthropocentricism and Egocentrism’, 2017 , esp. 184-188.

Note, for example, the Court’s decision to deny jurisdiction ratione personae over the application in Stibbe v. Austria , a case brought by an animal rights activist on behalf of a chimpanzee known as Matthis Pan. Stibbe sought to be appointed the legal guardian of Matthis Pan, but her application was denied by the Austrian courts on the basis that only humans can have guardians. Her appeal to the ECtHR was declared inadmissible on the basis that ‘[t]he applicant cannot […] claim to have herself been a victim of the violation in accordance with article 34 of the Convention. The complaint is therefore not in accordance with the personal scope of the Convention under article 35 paragraph 3’: Letter from A. Wampach, Deputy Registrar for the First Section, in the matter of ECHR, Stibbe v. Austria , 22 January 2010, Reference No. ECHR-LGer11.0R(CD8); IF/IW/tpe; Application No. 26188/08 [my translation]. Jurisdiction ratione personae , clearly, will be an obstacle to cases of this kind being heard before the ECtHR. This may be contrasted to the now-famous Orangutána Sandra decision before the courts of Argentina, in which it was decided animals may be the subject of rights: ‘Based on a dynamic rather than a static legal interpretation, it is necessary to accord the animal the status of a rights-holder. Non-human subjects (animals) are bearers of rights, and therefore their protection is required within the corresponding jurisdiction’: Camera Federal de Casación Penal, Orangutána Sandra , Judgment of 18 December 2014, LEX No. CCC 68831/2014/CFC1, para. 2. [I thank Dr Pedro Villarreal for his assistance interpreting the judgment and preparing this translation.] Similar decisions were handed down in 2016 in another Argentinian case (Tercer Juzgado de Garantías de Mendoza, Chimpanzee ‘Cecilia’ , Judgment of 3 November 2016, No. P-72.254/15), and by the Colombian Supreme Court in 2017, granting habeas corpus in favour of a spectacled bear: Corte Suprema de Justicia de Colombia, Judgment of 26 July 2017, AHC4806–2017, Radicación no. l7001–22–13–000–2017–00468–02. In the common law world such cases have to date been raised only in the USA, and as yet without great success. In the most recent development (at time of writing), application to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals was denied on 5 April 2018 in joined cases submitted on behalf of two chimpanzees, in which a writ of habeas corpus was denied at first instance: State of New York Court of Appeals, In re the Nonhuman Rights Project, inc., on behalf of Tommv v. Patrick C. Lavery and In re the Nonhuman Rights Project, inc., on behalf of Kiko v. Carmen Presti et al. , Judgment of 8 May 2018, unreported, Motion No. 2018-268.

And there are many who argue that it should not. See, for example, Elder, ‘Legal Rights for Nature – The Wrong Answer to the Right Question’ 1984 , 285-295; Livingston, ‘Rightness or Rights?’ 1984 , 309-321; Machan, ‘Do Animals Have Rights?’ 1991 , 163-173; Merrills, ‘Environmental Rights’ 2007 , 672.

See, in particular, Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité: Human-Animal Comparisons in Law’ 2016b , 39-44 et seq.; Gearty, ‘Do Human Rights Help or Hinder Environmental Protection’ 2010 , 7-22; and further Plass, ‘Exploring Animal Rights as an Imperative for Human Welfare’ 2010 , 403-430; Keim/Sosnowski, ‘Human Rights v Animal Rights: Mutually Exclusive or Complementary Causes’ 2012 , 78-83. An intriguing (but, in the author’s view, ultimately ill-directed) inversion of this debate is Shikubu, ‘Work like a Dog’ 2014 , 44-65.

Gearty, ‘Human Rights and Environmental Protection’ 2010 .

Ibid., 7. [References omitted]. A similar argument is made by Knox, ‘Climate Ethics and Human Rights’ 2014 , 22-34; but compare the problematisation of this aspect of human rights discourse in Blouin Genest/Paquerot, ‘Environmental Human Rights as a Battlefield’ 2016 , 132-154.

Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité’ 2016a , 26.

Gearty, ‘Human Rights and Environmental Protection’ 2010 , 15-18.

Ibid., 21; for a similar argument grounded in the concept of dignity see Kotzmann/Seery, ‘Dignity in International Human Rights Law’ 2017 , 1-41.

Gearty, ‘Human Rights and Environmental Protection’ 2010 , 22. The significance of empathy is also persuasively emphasised by Peters, who notes not only the transformative power of empathy on discourses and societies (39-42), but also the potential for definitions to structure empathic reactions. She begins by recalling the hideous nineteenth and twentieth century practice of displaying people of non-European origin as zoo exhibits, and notes that ‘[t]he “primitives” were relegated to the animal side of an imagined boundary’: Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité’ 2016a , 25-26; see also Peters, ‘Introduction: Animal Law – A Paradigm Change’ 2015 , 17-18. For an examination of empathy as a basis for distinctively human rights see Robinson, ‘Biological Foundations of Human Rights’ 2013 , 54-81.

MacKinnon, ‘Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights’ 2004 , 270.

Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité’ 2016a , 48.

This idea is similar to Bulto’s substantive regime complementarity : Bulto, ‘Environment’ 2014 , 1025-1028.

An example of such an approach in practice can b e seen in the Court’s decision on admissibility in Friend and Others v UK (n. 1). In that case, a challenge to the UK ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs, the Court first ruled that the Convention articles claimed by the applicants were not engaged, before noting (in particular in relation to article 11) that ‘the measures served the legitimate aim of (…) “the protection of … morals”, in the sense that they were designed to eliminate the hunting and killing of animals for sport in a manner which the legislature judged to cause suffering and to be morally and ethically objectionable’ (at 18). The Court thus found that had the convention rights been engaged, the limitation would nevertheless have fallen within the State’s margin of appreciation. Though at best indicative, as no full examination was undertaken, the admissibility decision shows one way in which the interests of animals can condition human rights—in this case as a limitation, elsewhere through a zone of confluence approach.

Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité’ 2016a , 53; citing Saskia Stucki, ‘Sind die Menschenrechte in Zukunft noch Menschen-Rechte?’, Völkerrechtsblog, 13 May 2014 , available at: http://voelkerrechtsblog.com/category/sind-die-menschenrechte-in-zukunft-noch-menschen-rechte/ .

This idea I take from Mark Rowlands, Animals Like Us (London: Verso 2002 ), 125-136 et seq. Rowlands uses the term to refer to the interest all animals have in remaining alive, as well as the basic goods that enable them to do so. He argues that the non-vital interests of any (human or non-human) animal should not outweigh the vital interests of any other.

Anne Peters, ‘Global Animal Law: What it is and why we need it’, Transnational Environmental Law 5(1) ( 2016b ), 9-23, 20.

Blouin Genest, G., & Paquerot, S. (2016). Environmental human rights as a Battlefield: A grammar of political confrontation. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 7 , 132–154.

Article   Google Scholar  

Bulto, T. S. (2014). The environment and human rights. In A. Mihr & M. Gibney (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of human rights (Vol. II, pp. 1015–1030). London: Sage Publishing.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Çoban, A. R. (2004). Protection of property rights within the European Convention on Human Rights . Aldershot: Ashgate.

Google Scholar  

Cochrane, A. (2012). Animal rights without liberation: Applied ethics and human obligations . New York: Columbia University Press.

de Lucia, V. (2017). Beyond anthropocentricism and egocentrism: A biopolitical reading of environmental law. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 8 (2), 181–202.

Elder, P. S. (1984). Legal rights for nature – the wrong answer to the right question. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 22 (2), 285–295.

Fenwick, H., Phillipson, G., & Williams, A. (2017). Texts, cases and materials on public law and human rights (4th ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.

Gearty, C. (2010). Do human rights help or hinder environmental protection. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 1 , 7–22.

Harrop, S. (2011). Climate change, conservation and the place for wild animal welfare in international law. Journal of Environmental Law, 23 (3), 441–462.

Keim, S., & Sosnowski, J. (2012). Human rights v animal rights: Mutually exclusive or complementary causes. Australian Animal Protection Law Journal, 8 , 78–83.

Knox, J. (2014). Climate ethics and human rights. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 5 (Special Issue), 22–34.

Kobylarz, N. (forthcoming). The European Court of Human Rights: An underrated forum for environmental litigation. In European Environmental Law Forum, Sustainable Management of Natural Resources – Legal Approaches and Instruments . Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3178983

Kotzmann, J., & Seery, C. (2017). Dignity in international human rights law: Potential applicability in relation to international recognition of animal rights. Michigan State International Law Review, 26 (1), 1–41.

Kymlicka, W., & Donaldson, S. (2014). Animal rights, multiculturalism, and the left. Journal of Social Philosophy, 45 (1), 116–135.

Livingston, J. (1984). Rightness or rights? Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 22 (2), 309–321.

Machan, T. (1991). Do animals have rights? Public Affairs Quarterly, 5 (2), 163–173.

MacKinnon, C. (2004). Of mice and men: A feminist fragment on animal rights. In C. Sunstein & M. Nussbaum (Eds.), Animal rights: Current debates and new directions (pp. 263–276). Oxford: OUP.

Merrills, J. (2007). Environmental rights. In D. Bodansky, J. Brunnée, & E. Hey (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of international environmental law (pp. 663–680). Oxford: OUP.

Peters, A. (2015). Introduction: Animal law – a paradigm change. In A. Peters, S. Stucki, & L. Boscardin (Eds.), Animal law: Reform or revolution (pp. 15–32). Zürich: Schulthess.

Peters, A. (2016a). Liberté, Égalité, Animalité: Human-Animal Comparisons in Law. Transnational Environmental Law, 5 , 25–53.

Peters, A. (2016b). Global animal law: What it is and why we need it. Transnational Environmental Law, 5 (1), 9–23.

Plass, S. A. (2010). Exploring animal rights as an imperative for human welfare. West Virginia Law Review, 112 , 403–430.

Redgwell, C. (1996). Life, the universe and everything: A critique of anthropocentric rights. In A. Boyle & M. Anderson (Eds.), Human rights approaches to environmental protection (pp. 71–87). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Robinson, C. (2013). Biological foundations of human rights. In D. Shelton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of international human rights law (pp. 54–81). Oxford: OUP.

Rowlands, M. (2002). Animals like us . London: Verso.

Shelton, D. (2001). Environmental Rights. In P. Alston (Ed.), Peoples’ rights (pp. 185–258). Oxford: OUP.

Shikubu, M. (2014). Work like a dog: Expanding animal cruelty statutes to gain human rights for migrant farmworkers in the US. National Lawyers Guild Review, 71 , 44–65.

Stucki, S. (2014, May 13). Sind die Menschenrechte in Zukunft noch Menschen-Rechte?. Völkerrechtsblog . Available at http://voelkerrechtsblog.com/category/sind-die-menschenrechte-in-zukunft-noch-menschen-rechte/

Taylor, N. (1999). Whiter rights? Animal rights and the rise of New Welfarism. Animal Issues, 3 (1), 27–41.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tom Sparks .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Anne Peters

Rights and permissions

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Sparks, T. (2020). Protection of Animals Through Human Rights: The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights. In: Peters, A. (eds) Studies in Global Animal Law. Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, vol 290. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-60756-5_13

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-60756-5_13

Published : 16 April 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

Print ISBN : 978-3-662-60755-8

Online ISBN : 978-3-662-60756-5

eBook Packages : Law and Criminology Law and Criminology (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Stay informed: Sign up for eNews

• Facebook (opens in new window)
• X (opens in new window)
• Instagram (opens in new window)
• YouTube (opens in new window)
• LinkedIn (opens in new window)

The Case for Animal Rights

• Amazon (opens in new window)
• Barnes & Noble (opens in new window)
• Bookshop (opens in new window)
• UC Press (opens in new window)

About the Book

About the author, table of contents.

• Visit the author's portal site to access more information on the worldwide efforts to combat animal abuse

Programs submenu

Regions submenu, topics submenu, how to read polls and why we should: a conversation with john zogby, the cyber safety review board: reflecting on the past & charting the future, japan searches for leadership, driving impact live: championing gender equality with amb. geeta rao gupta.

• Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy
• Aerospace Security Project
• Africa Program
• Americas Program
• Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy
• Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative
• Asia Program
• Australia Chair
• Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy
• Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy
• Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies
• China Power Project
• Chinese Business and Economics
• Defending Democratic Institutions
• Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group
• Defense 360
• Defense Budget Analysis
• Diversity and Leadership in International Affairs Project
• Economics Program
• Emeritus Chair in Strategy
• Energy Security and Climate Change Program
• Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program
• Freeman Chair in China Studies
• Futures Lab
• Geoeconomic Council of Advisers
• Global Food and Water Security Program
• Global Health Policy Center
• Hess Center for New Frontiers
• Human Rights Initiative
• Humanitarian Agenda
• Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program
• International Security Program
• Japan Chair
• Kissinger Chair
• Korea Chair
• Langone Chair in American Leadership
• Middle East Program
• Missile Defense Project
• Project on Critical Minerals Security
• Project on Fragility and Mobility
• Project on Nuclear Issues
• Project on Prosperity and Development
• Project on Trade and Technology
• Renewing American Innovation
• Scholl Chair in International Business
• Smart Women, Smart Power
• Southeast Asia Program
• Stephenson Ocean Security Project
• Strategic Technologies Program
• Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative
• Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies
• Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program
• All Regions
• Australia, New Zealand & Pacific
• Middle East
• Russia and Eurasia
• American Innovation
• Civic Education
• Climate Change
• Cybersecurity
• Defense Budget and Acquisition
• Defense and Security
• Energy and Sustainability
• Food Security
• Gender and International Security
• Geopolitics
• Global Health
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Intelligence
• International Development
• Maritime Issues and Oceans
• Missile Defense
• Nuclear Issues
• Transnational Threats
• Water Security

Examining Extremism: Violent Animal Rights Extremists

Photo: MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Blog Post — August 20, 2021

By: Grace Hwang

Animal rights extremists, a subset of ecoterrorists, aim to end the real or perceived abuse and exploitation of animals through sabotage and violence. This analysis provides an overview of the movement’s history, ideology, organizational structure, and targets and tactics in the United States. It concludes with an assessment that while animal rights extremists intend to achieve their objectives by causing maximum economic and physical damage, the threat they pose to the United States is at a historical low.

The origins of the modern animal rights extremist movement in the United States have ties to British activist Ronnie Lee and the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), a group formed to sabotage hunting expeditions as they were underway. Lee was first a member of the HSA, but he later created an offshoot group, Bands of Mercy, to prevent hunts from ever occurring. He called for the use of more radicalized action and founded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976 as an umbrella organization for any activist willing to engage in violent action in order to combat industries perceived to be violating animal rights.

The British ideas and inspirations of the animal rights movement migrated to the United States. In May 1977, activists affiliated with the Undersea Railroad released two dolphins into the ocean from the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Marine Biology. A U.S. branch of the ALF began operating in 1979, when they orchestrated a raid to free laboratory animals from New York University’s Medical Center.

By the 1990s, the ALF established itself as the most infamous and damaging animal rights group in the United States. For example, one cell conducted a string of 20 arsons from 1996 through 2001 , which caused $40 million of damage to government facilities, such as ranger stations, wildlife facilities, and a police department; private companies, such as meat packing companies, a ski resort, a lumber company, a truck center, and a farm; an educational institution, such as the University of Washington Horticultural Center; and infrastructure, such as a power line. In May 2005, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials stated that “violent animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists now pose one of the most serious terrorism threats to the nation,” and the ALF was listed as a domestic terrorist threat in a 2005 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) internal planning document.

In coordination with private corporations, the U.S. government conducted a targeted campaign to arrest and indict ALF members during the mid-2000s. Activists have labeled the legal action as the Green Scare , claiming that law enforcement unjustly targeted animal rights extremists despite the lack of any casualties resulting from related attacks.

The U.S. ALF branch, as well as other animal rights extremist groups, continue operations today. However, data compiled by the CSIS Transnational Threats Project (TNT) demonstrate a notable decrease in the number of terrorist attacks and plots conducted by animal rights extremists from January 1994 to January 2021—including six years absent of attacks and plots.

Animal rights extremists regard Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation as a core ideological foundation for the movement. Singer proposed that the interests of humans and the interests of animals deserve equal consideration based on the utilitarian principle that morally correct actions are determined by the extent to which they maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The movement also draws inspiration from U.S. philosopher Tom Regan , who argued on a similar basis that because some animals have the cognitive ability to feel pain, they should be treated with the same moral standards as humans.

Animal rights extremists seek to permanently end major inequities to animals, which they deem as exploitation and abuse. First and foremost, extremists are motivated to end speciesism , which is defined as the discrimination of beings on the basis of their species. They are also opposed to vivisection , or surgery conducted on a living organism for the purpose of experimentation. Animal rights extremists will not settle for animal welfarism —the general improvement of conditions for animals—but instead aim to achieve full equality for animals by imposing the greatest costs on private companies, educational and medical facilities, and individuals involved in these activities.

Animal rights extremists believe their actions are extensional self-defense , in which human beings act as proxies to protect animals. They have likened the concept to the legal principle of necessity defense, when an illegal act is necessary to avoid imminent harm. Extremists believe that since animals are unable to defend themselves, humans are morally obligated to engage in acts of sabotage or violence on their behalf.

Organizational Structure

The animal rights extremist movement relies on grassroots organization and activists who engage in “direct action” against companies or individuals that exploit animals. This may include removing animals from facilities that conduct experiments, arranging veterinary care for animals, or relocating animals to sanctuaries. One example occurred in 2011 when activists entered a mink ranch in Gifford, Washington, and released 1,000 minks . Extremists also conduct violence against individuals associated with animal experimentation, such as in 2009, when members of the Animal Liberation Brigade set fire to a car belonging to a neuroscientist at UCLA for testing lab monkeys with methamphetamines. 

Although it is often framed as a formal group, the ALF operates as a loose network of radicalized individuals or small cells that usually consist of groups of friends. Extremists can use the ALF website, which posts instructions on how to carry out attacks, conduct surveillance, and construct incendiary devices. Furthermore, volunteers for ALF release news updates—including on two websites, Bite Back and No Compromise—through which activists claim responsibility for actions. The ALF also claims responsibility through its Animal Liberation Press Office and publicizes anonymous communiqués from volunteers. Members of the ALF act covertly and attempt to remain anonymous, but the ALF maintains partnerships with public groups that offer support, such as the Vegan Prisoners Support Group and the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALF SG).

The ALF partners with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) , a British group that actively condones terrorist tactics and maintains a U.S. chapter, which is led by Kevin Kjonaas. SHAC targets the UK-based Huntingdon Life Sciences Laboratory, which also operates in New Jersey.

Tactics and Targets

According to the TNT data , which tracks terrorist attacks and plots in the United States between January 1994 and January 2021, animal rights extremists have conducted 82 attacks and plots. This data set defines terrorism as the deliberate use—or threat—of violence by non-state actors in order to achieve political goals and create a broad psychological impact. In addition to these 82 incidents, animal rights extremists have conducted other criminal activity that did not meet these criteria, such as vandalism.

Targets of attacks and plots include facilities perceived to be violating animal rights, such as laboratories, farms, and restaurants; researchers that use animals—particularly non-human primates—for experimentation; and private companies that rely on animal testing or are affiliated with those that do. Of the targets in the 82 attacks and plots, businesses accounted for the majority at 67 percent, followed by educational institutions at 14 percent; government, military, and police personnel and institutions at 11 percent; private individuals at 7 percent; and transportation and infrastructure at 1 percent.

Animal rights extremists conduct attacks to cause economic losses, property damage, or major setbacks in operations. Explosives and incendiaries were used in 87 percent of incidents, the clear majority, followed by “other” in 10 percent, melee weapons in 2 percent, and threats and hoaxes in 1 percent. The 10 percent of attacks characterized as “other” involved an assortment of less traditional tactics, such as mailing letters containing razors to researchers who worked with animals. Firebomb attacks have caused significant damage, including two pipe bomb explosions at the biotechnology firm Chiron Life Sciences Center in Emeryville, California, on August 28, 2003. A threat accompanying these blasts stated , “This is the endgame for the animal killers and if you choose to stand with them you will be dealt with accordingly.”

Threat Assessment

Animal rights extremists have used radical methods of sabotage and violence to cause maximum physical and economic damage in the past, such as the series of arsons conducted by the ALF in 2010. The cost of damages animal rights extremists, along with their violent environmental counterparts, caused is estimated to be more than $110 million as of 2004. While the movement is determined to persevere until all human use of animals—from husbandry to research—is completely eradicated, animal rights extremists present a low but enduring threat in the United States.

Animal rights extremists tend to target businesses as well as government and educational facilities rather than people, resulting in zero fatalities caused directly by the movement. Furthermore, by 2004—with an outlier increase in 2010—the number of attacks and plots conducted by animal rights extremists had sharply declined with only two incidents since 2015.  

One explanation for the decrease in activity is the U.S. government’s response following the height of attacks during the late 1990s. In 2006, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) to federally prosecute anyone accused of acting with the intention of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise—defined as a commercial or academic entity that uses animals for food or fiber production, research, or testing, as well as zoos, circuses, or other lawful animal competitive events. AETA increased the maximum prison time for such offenses up to 20 years. These changes, in conjunction with the FBI’s concerted investigations and arrests , resulted in increased pressure on animal extremist cells. Activists were more willing to betray their cells or become informants for the FBI.  

While animal rights extremists currently present a low threat in the United States, law enforcement and government officials can view this movement as a case study on how to respond to the growing violent far-right extremist threats in the United States and the need to respond to domestic terrorism . There is currently no domestic terrorist statute in the United States, but the AETA serves as an example of how to use legal alternatives to combat domestic extremist activity. While the AETA did receive critique for its excessive punitive response, it more importantly serves as an example of the effectiveness of a unified U.S. government response to counter domestic extremism.

Grace Hwang is a program coordinator and research assistant with the Burke Chair in Strategy and the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Programs & Projects

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

'Animal Liberation Now' And The Case For More Humane Treatment Of Animals

Peter Singer, Princeton University professor of ethics. The AGE/Fairfax Media via Getty Images hide caption

Peter Singer, Princeton University professor of ethics.

Fifty years ago, Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer made the case that humans assume they're morally superior to other animals and that their actions against them are justified.

At the time, speciesism was a radical concept that was adopted by some animal rights groups but was largely ignored by the general public.

But the Animal rights tides are turning. Today, roughly 10 to 15 percent of Americans identify as vegan or vegetarian according to researchers at Oklahoma State and Kansas State University. California passed a sweeping law last year that requires any pork that is sold within the state to come from farms that allow pigs to roam freely. A recent challenge to the law by pork producers was blocked by the Supreme Court. Forty-three countries and 10 U.S. states now ban the practice of testing cosmetic products on animals.

But Singer argues there's still much more progress that needs to be made on animal rights, pointing to the mass extermination of pigs in Iowa at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive growth in China's meat industry as the country's population and economy grow.

His new book "Animal Liberation Now" revisits the themes of his 1975 seminal classic, Animal Liberation, and examines how the animal rights movement intersects with climate change, social justice, and more.

From the book's preface:

Animal Liberation Now shows that despite the greater prominence of the animal movement, we continue to mistreat animals on an incomprehensible scale. This book advocates a new ethic for our relations with animals that starts from the premise that they are sentient beings, with lives of their own to live, who have done nothing to deserve the suffering we inflict on them. This book is a call to join with others to bring about a radical change in the way we treat them.

Where does the animal rights movement stand in 2023? Like what you hear? Find more of our programs online .

Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

• Kristen Stilt
• See full issue

The fields of animal law and environmental law have an uneasy relationship. At a basic level, they are intertwined by the fundamental observation that animals, human and nonhuman, exist in the environment. Environmental law is generally concerned with animals at the level of species (and specifically endangered or threatened species), whereas animal law is concerned with all animals, regardless of particular characteristics. The issue of wild horses in the western United States illustrates this tension. Some environmentalists view the horses as “feral pests” that damage the fragile ecosystem and compete with wildlife — and privately owned cattle — for resources. 1 They argue that the horses should be gathered through helicopter-led “roundups” and euthanized or sold. 2 Animal protection advocates argue that these roundups are cruel and note that the millions of cattle also grazing on these lands are far more damaging to the environment than the horses. 3 They insist that these wild horses should not be killed — the life of each individual animal matters and should be protected. 4

Environmental law is the older and more established field of law. There are many ways to measure this, such as at the constitutional level, which shows environmental law’s seniority and success. Most constitutions address the environment, and the typical phrasing is anthropocentric: a human right to a healthy environment as seen, for example, in article 42 of the Constitution of Kenya: “Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment . . . .” 5 Newer trends adopt ecocentric or biocentric approaches and grant rights to nature (or its component parts, such as a river) at the constitutional or legislative level or through judicial decisions. 6

In contrast to environmental rights, it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that assigns “constitutional significance to the experiences of individual nonhuman animals.” 7 Animals are protected in just a handful of constitutions with no clear adoption trend: Switzerland (1973), 8 India (1976), 9 Brazil (1988), 10 Slovenia (1991), 11 Germany (2002), 12 Luxembourg (2007), 13 Austria (2013), 14 Egypt (2014), 15 and Russia (2020). 16 ) (Russ.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, 2020) . The year accompanying each country listed above indicates when the provision was added to an existing constitution or when a new constitution with the provision was adopted. These provisions use terms such as the “welfare” of animals, 17 the “dignity” of animals, 18 animal “protection,” 19 “compassion” toward animals, 20 and animal “cruelty” 21 — all of which follow a general animal welfare approach. In contrast to the environmental context, none of the provisions uses the term “rights.” 22

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. 23 That instruction includes not only positive examples but also notes of caution, where animal law may face different and more formidable challenges. The Essay first assesses the role that a human right to a healthy environment has played in the development of environmental rights and rights of nature, and then it discusses the relevance of this experience for animal rights. In Part II, it turns to how rights of nature have been interpreted and applied in several prominent court decisions and suggests insights that animal rights can take from this jurisprudence. Given the brevity of Forum essays, I cannot be comprehensive. Rather, I chart out the range of my arguments and support them with some notable examples, with the intention to treat this topic more fully in a future work.

I. A Human Right to a Healthy Environment, A Human Right to Animal Protection

The anthropocentric formulation of a human right to a healthy environment initially may not seem like a helpful framing for the cause of animal rights, but it is actually very instructive. “Rights of Nature” have roots in two sources. First, these rights emerged from a recent recognition that current environmental law, including the human right to a healthy environment, has failed to address the global ecological crisis and notably climate change. 24 Second, indigenous traditions and jurisprudence “that have always treated humans as part of nature, rather than distinct from it,” have long provided a rights of nature framework and approach. 25 The widespread acceptance of a human right to a healthy environment served as part of the foundation for the development of a stronger rights of nature approach, which synergistically connected with indigenous approaches to nature.

In an animal context, an analogous formulation would be a human right to animal protection, a right of humans to have all animals adequately protected. This may sound like awkward phrasing, but such an approach does closely match how, in general, legal systems currently treat animals. 26 That is, animal interests are protected to the extent that humans want them to be and benefit from those protections and limitations.

An anthropocentric approach to animal protection along these lines is likely politically more acceptable than an animal rights–based approach. If it were widely adopted, however, it could serve merely to entrench the status quo in animal law. Alternatively, a human right to animal protection could offer the possibility of far more robust protection than currently exists under animal welfare laws. Because different humans will have different ideas about what the protection of animals should involve, a human right could allow more protective views to be recognized. It could also provide an intermediate step to animal rights, laying a foundation for future expansion. More needs to be known about the evolution from the right to a healthy environment to rights of nature, and how animal rights might be able to follow a similar path.

II. Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

Ecocentric or biocentric approaches that lodge a right in nature or its component parts also may be promising for the development of legally recognized animal rights. Rights of nature are not widespread, but they have potential for growth and impact. At the constitutional level, Ecuador was the first to recognize the rights of nature. Article 71 begins: “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” 27 Bolivia adopted this approach through the Law on the Rights of Mother Earth (2010); 28 the enumerated rights are the rights to life, diversity of life, water, clean air, equilibrium, restoration, and pollution-free living. 29 Other countries have recognized the right in judicial opinions. 30

A. Animals as Part of Nature

At the most fundamental level, if nature has rights, and if nature includes animals, then rights-based claims could be made on behalf of animals using existing rights of nature doctrine and strategy. A 2008 case from the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil, known as the Wild Parrot case, illustrates this possibility. 31 The case involved an individual who had kept a single wild animal, a blue-fronted parrot, in custody for more than two decades and in inadequate living conditions. 32 This parrot was considered a wild species; this no doubt facilitated the connection to nature, but the court engaged in language that stretched beyond concern for a wild species. The court cited article 225 of the constitution as evidence for Brazil’s “ecological approach.” 33 Article 225 is an anthropocentric human right to an “ecologically balanced environment,” not a rights of nature provision, and the constitutional framing of animal protection comes through an environmental, “fauna and . . . flora” framework. 34 What is remarkable is that the court took this limited language as a starting point to reach a discussion of rights of nature and recognition of sentient beings in general.

The court called for a rethinking of the “Kantian, anthropocentric and individualistic concept of human dignity.” 35 Dignity should be reformulated to recognize “an intrinsic value conferred to non-human sensitive beings, whose moral status would be recognized and would share with the human beings the same moral community.” 36 The treatment of animals “must be based no longer on human dignity or human compassion, but on the very dignity inherent in the existence of nonhuman animals.” 37 The court brought together two strands of jurisprudence: the protection of animals in the German and Swiss Constitutions 38 and the rights of nature language in the Ecuadorean Constitution and Bolivian Law on the Rights of Mother Earth. By doing so, it reached a language of rights: “This view of nature as an expression of life in its entirety enables the Constitutional Law and other areas of law to recognize the environment and non-human animals as beings of their own value, therefore deserving respect and care, so that the legal system grants them the ownership of rights and dignity.” 39 The court conceptually moved nonhuman animals out of the environmental constraints of article 225 to attain their own independent status, for which the court advocated both rights and dignity.

B. Nonhuman Rights

Even if the concept of nature is not currently understood to include individual animals, provisions recognizing the rights of nature still implicitly acknowledge that a nonhuman can have rights. This may seem obvious since corporations and other nonhuman entities are legal persons and have rights, but entities such as rivers or ecosystems traditionally have not been extended the same recognition by legal systems worldwide. Rivers have been treated as legal persons in some jurisdictions, notably in Bangladesh, 40 Colombia, 41 Ecuador, 42 India, 43 New Zealand, 44 and the United States. 45

One of the most significant cases involving river rights was decided by the Constitutional Court of Colombia in 2016 (the Atrato River Case). 46 The plaintiffs challenged the pollution and degradation that industrial and illegal mining and logging had caused to the Atrato River basin, the tributaries, and surrounding territories. 47 They showed that the Atrato banks were the ancestral home to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities such as themselves. 48 The river provided a subsistence means of living based on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. 49 The plaintiffs asked the court to protect their fundamental rights to life, health, water, food security, a healthy environment, and the culture and territory of their ethnic communities. 50 They also asked the court to impose measures to address the crisis in the Atrato River basin resulting from the environmental pollution and degradation. 51

While the plaintiffs framed their claims as rights of the individuals living in the Atrato River basin, the court did not limit itself to a consideration of anthropocentric rights. For the court, the importance of nature “[was] established, of course, in reference to the humans that inhabit it and the need to count on a healthy environment to live a dignified life in conditions of well-being; but [nature’s importance was founded] also in connection with the other living organisms with whom the planet is shared, understood as entities deserving of protection in and of themselves .” 52 Nature was a subject of rights. 53

Thus, theoretically, the rights of nature may be violated even in the absence of any injury to humans. A decision from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights made this point clearly: “The Court consider[ed] it important to stress that, as an autonomous right, the right to a healthy environment, unlike other rights, protects the components of the environment, such as forests, rivers, and seas, as legal interests in themselves, even in the absence of the certainty or evidence of a risk to individuals.” 54

An excellent example of an approach that leads with the rights of nature is the Turag River case, decided by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in 2019. 55 Through time-sequenced photographs, a news article that the court relied on in its decision showed the encroachment on the Turag River due to “river-grabbers,” pollutants, and the failure to keep the river navigable through dredging. 56 Despite laws and many judicial decisions, encroachers walled off land in the river and deployed bulldozers and excavators to fill their newly claimed territory, expanding the reach of dry land at the river’s expense. 57 The same actions were taking place in other rivers in the capital of this “riverine country.” 58 The NGO Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh brought the case to eject all the illegal occupiers and stop landfilling and construction activities on the river’s territory. 59

The Turag River itself was at the center of the case from the outset. But the river for its own sake? The court echoed the language of the Daily Star article, speaking in terms of the Turag becoming a “dead river” 60 or facing “extinction” if the activity was not stopped. 61 The court also acknowledged that the occupation and pollution had caused a “major shortage of potable water, for which people are constantly facing health risks.” 62 And given the centrality of waterways to Bangladesh, “[d]estroying the rivers is . . . the same as our collective suicide.” 63 As a last resort to save the river, the court declared the Turag and indeed all rivers in the country legal persons. 64 It also ordered the removal of all unlawful pollution and construction and issued seventeen other wide-ranging orders. 65 The Turag River case and others show that rights can be lodged in a nonhuman, but in practice the human rights are also significant components.

C. Nonhuman Remedies and Enforcement

Finally, the remedies discussion in rights of nature cases demonstrates that there are adequate ways for humans to assess and implement the desires and needs of nonhuman entities. In what is known as the Deforestation Case, the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil held that in addition to the requirement to restore the damage caused to the environment, a defendant may also be required to pay monetary damages, or “pure ecological damage,” for “degrading nature in itself, an asset that is not and cannot be owned.” 66 Applied to the animal context, it could stand for the principle that wrongful treatment of an animal, for example, could require the payment of compensation without any particular showing of physical harm. The payment would presumably go into a trust established to support the needs of the animal or her ecosystem.

In the animal context, the idea that humans are capable of making such an assessment has been questioned. In Naruto v. Slater , 67 the Ninth Circuit took a generally irritated tone toward the organization that brought the case on behalf of Naruto, a crested macaque. 68 Concurring in part, Judge Smith stated: “But the interests of animals? We are really asking what another species desires. . . . We have millennia of experience understanding the interests and desires of humankind. That is not necessarily true of animals.” 69 If so — and without conceding the point — that is also not necessarily true of rivers, forests, or ecosystems, but courts that grant rights to nature routinely appoint guardianship bodies to make these determinations. 70

There is a limit to the analogy between nature and nonhuman animals that appears at the stage of remedies in some cases and goes to the heart of the comparison. For a river, the component of nature for which there is the most extensive case law, courts typically speak in terms of “rights that imply its protection, conservation, maintenance” and “restoration,” as in the Atrato River Case. 71 That court sought to have the conditions of the river improved so that the human communities could again make full use of the river for agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. The remedy raises a deeper question, one that the court did not ask: What is the intrinsic purpose of a river? The implication of rights of river judgments is not that a river simply seeks to be left alone. The purpose of a river in these decisions is to serve humans, through access to water, transportation, and the animals who live in them.

The rights that advocates seek for animals are far more robust and categorically reject that the inherent purpose of an animal is to serve human interests and uses. In the habeas corpus cases, the animals are in captivity, such as in a zoo or research facility. 72 The plaintiffs seek release of these animals to a setting in which they can live more natural lives, such as a sanctuary, given that these animals generally cannot be placed in a fully natural, wild environment. 73 While the presumption is that the transfer to better environments would aid in the protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration of these animals, the point was not that the animals will look and feel better for any kind of human benefit. The remedy of habeas corpus seeks to release the animals from a human environment so that they could be, to the extent possible, left alone to be animals.

This difference in the issue of remedies and their enforcement may be significant and may project back onto the fundamental question of whether humans will recognize animal rights at all. Rights of nature call for some major changes in the way that humans live in the world, as seen in the above cases. Viewed from the remedy angle, the rights of animals are an even greater challenge to the behavior of humans. Rights of animals impact fundamental questions such as what humans eat and drink, what they wear, and what kinds of entertainment they engage in, to name just a few. A judge may seek to avoid remedies that would alter human behavior in dramatic ways, and the mere possibility of these remedies may also work to undermine the cause of action itself. 74

Rights of nature approaches are instructive to the cause of animal rights, intellectually and practically. They do not offer a model to be copied wholesale, but instead call for careful study of the parallels and points of disconnection, of the commonalities and the conflicts, with the potential for significant results.

* Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Director, Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program. I thank Sam Bookman, Doug Kysar, Justin Marceau, Kathy Meyer, and Steve Wise for insightful comments on this Essay. I thank the editors of the Harvard Law Review for their thoughtful engagement and editorial assistance. Andy Stawasz, J.D. ’21, provided outstanding research assistance. I also thank the translators who assisted with translations of the cases cited in the Essay: Cibele Maria Melendez Texeira Bandeira and Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidates Beatriz Botero Arcila, Sannoy Das, and Nicolás Parra-Herrera.

^ Karin Brulliard, The Battle over Wild Horses , WASH. POST (Sept. 18, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/09/18/wild-horses-have-long-kicked-up-controversy-now-foes-say-they-have-solution [ https://perma.cc/L9BW-GJP7 ].

^ The constitution of Kenya , 2010, art. 42, in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline , 2010) .

^ James R. May & Erin Daly, Global Environmental Constitutionalism 255–56 (2015). A biocentric approach places humans on the same level as all living beings, whereas an ecocentric approach considers all that is in the natural world — living beings and nonliving entities — to all be equally valued. Int’l Rivers et al., Rights of Rivers 10 (2020), https://3waryu2g9363hdvii1ci666p-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/86/2020/09/Right-of-Rivers-Report-V3-Digital-compressed.pdf [ https://perma.cc/JLG7-4QD5 ].

^ Jessica Eisen & Kristen Stilt, Protection and Status of Animals , in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law ¶ 1 (Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann & Rüdiger Wolfrum eds., 2016), Oxford Constitutional Law (article updated Dec. 2016).

^ Id . ¶¶ 26–35.

^ Id . ¶¶ 11–17.

^ Id . ¶¶ 36–38.

^ Id . ¶¶ 39–41.

^ Id . ¶¶ 18–25.

^ Id . ¶¶ 47–56.

^ Id . ¶¶ 42–46.

^ Id . ¶¶ 63–65.

^ See Konstitutsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii [Konst. RF] [Constitution] art. 114(1)(e 5

^ Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶ 45.

^ Id . ¶ 31.

^ Id . ¶ 23.

^ Id . ¶ 12.

^ Id . ¶ 36.

^ Id . ¶ 69.

^ The desire for more rights is not an unqualified positive, as some have argued. While an important question, this Essay does not engage in that debate.

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 6.

^ Id . In the animal law context, more research is needed on the alignment of beliefs in indigenous communities with animal rights approaches — a partnership that has been important in the contemporary rights of nature movement. Due to issues such as whaling and seal hunting, this alignment has proven difficult, but with thoughtful engagement, it is within reach. See generally Maneesha Deckha, Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood , 41 J. Intercultural Stud . 77 (2020).

^ There is a long line of thinking in animal protection that preventing cruelty to animals is also beneficial for humans. One strand of this thinking focuses on a connection between violence against animals and violence against humans, referred to as the “link” theory. For a discussion and critique of this theory, see Justin Marceau , Beyond Cages 193–250 (2019).

^ Constitución de la República del Ecuador [Constitution] 2008 , art. 71, translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchti, ed., Maria Del Carmen Gress & J.J. Ruchti, trans., 2018 ) .

^ Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra [Law of the Rights of Mother Earth], Ley 071 (2010) ( Bol .) .

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 15–49.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.797.175/SP, Relator: Ministro OG Fernandes, 21.03.2019, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 13.05.2019 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=1806039&num_registro=201800312300&data=20190513&peticao_numero=-1&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/TZ76-P4E3 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Wild Parrot Case].

^ Id . at 2–3.

^ Id . at 9.

^ Constitução Federal [C.F.] [Constitution] art. 225 (Braz.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchi, ed., Keith S. Rosenn, trans., 2020) .

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 10.

^ Id . at 12.

^ See Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶¶ 22–24, 28–29.

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 14.

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 47.

^ See id . at 23.

^ See id . at 33.

^ See id . at 44.

^ See id . at 17.

^ See id . at 39. In India, the decisions have been stayed by the Supreme Court. Id . at 46. In the U.S. context, Native American tribal jurisdictions have led the way in recognizing rights of nature. The Navajo Nation Code Annotated, tit. I, § 205 (2014), states that “[a]ll creation, from Mother Earth and Father Sky to the animals, those who live in water, those who fly and plant life have their own laws and have rights and freedoms to exist.” The publication of Christopher D. Stone’s Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects , 45 S. Cal. L. Rev . 450 (1972), was influential for Justice Douglas, dissenting in Sierra Club v. Morton , 405 U.S. 727, 741–42 (1972) (“Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.”). Recently, some local governments in the United States have attempted to declare that natural communities and ecosystems have rights. For a discussion of these efforts, see David R. Boyd, The Rights of Nature 109–30 (2017).

^ Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], noviembre 10, 2016, Sentencia T-622/16 (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2016/t-622-16.htm [ https://perma.cc/CP7X-3NCJ ], translated in Center for Social Justice Studies v. Presidency of the Republic, Judgment T-622/16, Constitutional Court of Colombia (Nov. 10, 2016), The Atrato River Case , Dignity Rts. Project , http://files.harmonywithnatureun.org/uploads/upload838.pdf [ https://perma.cc/SF8R-W8EC ] [hereinafter Atrato River Case].

^ Id . § I.2.1.

^ Id . § I.1.

^ Id . § I.2.10.

^ Id . § IV.9.27.

^ Id . § IV.9.31.

^ The Environment and Human Rights (Arts. 4(1) and 5(1) in Relation to Arts. 1(1) and 2 American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-23/17, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) No. 23, ¶ 62 (Nov. 15, 2017), https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/opiniones/seriea_23_ing.pdf [ https://perma.cc/W3HZ-LPX9 ].

^ Bangladesh Supreme Court, High Court Division, Writ Petition No. 13898/2016 (2019) (official translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Turag River Case].

^ See id . at 3; Tawfique Ali, Time to Declare Turag Dead , Daily Star (Nov. 6, 2016), https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/time-declare-turag-dead-1310182 [ https://perma.cc/R5NL-WA6M ].

^ See Ali, supra note 56.

^ See Turag River Case, supra note 55, at 3.

^ Id . at 4.

^ Id . at 54.

^ Id . at 449.

^ Id . at 449–50.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.145.083/MG, Relator: Ministro Heman Benjamin, 27.09.2011, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 04.09.2012, 10 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=975073&num_registro=200901152629&data=20120904&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/FW7S-C6Q8 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library).

^ 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018).

^ Id . at 420.

^ Id . at 432 (Smith, J., concurring in part).

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 8.

^ Atrato River Case, supra note 46, § IV.9.32.

^ See, e.g ., Cámara del Fuero Contencioso Administrativo y Tributario [CABA] [Chamber of Appeals in Contentious Administrative and Tax Matters], Buenos Aires, sala 1, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” (Arg.), 3, https://www.animallaw.info/sites/default/files/1%20%E2%80%9CASOCIACIO%CC%81N%20DE%20FUNCIONARIOS%20Y%20ABOGADOS%20POR%20LOS%20DERECHOS%20DE%20LOS%20ANIMALES%20Y%20OTROS%20C%3A%20GCBA%20S%3A%20AMPARO%E2%80%9D%20.pdf [ https://perma.cc/7LD3-XCDG ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library); Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3) (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/comunicados/Comunicado%20No.%2003%20del%2023%20de%20enero%20de%202020.pdf [ https://perma.cc/9EX8-UCYL ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library). For an overview of habeas corpus cases brought in the United States on behalf of nonhuman animals, see Challenging the Legal Thinghood of Autonomous Nonhuman Animals , Nonhuman Rts. Project , https://www.nonhumanrights.org/litigation [ https://perma.cc/69P9-UU7M ].

^ CABA, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” 2, 14; C.C., enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3).

^ I thank Doug Kysar for the point that this also works in reverse; a judge in a jurisdiction with weak enforcement might be willing to go further with a finding of animal rights, knowing that the implications are unlikely to be seen as a practical matter.

• Environmental Law

March 20, 2021

More from this Issue

Private property managers, unchecked: the failures of federal compliance oversight in project-based section 8 housing.

• Molly Rockett

• Next Article
• Download PDF
• 1 THE EMERGENCE AND MAINSTREAMING OF LEGAL ANIMAL RIGHTS

Legal animal rights are on the horizon. 1 Not too long ago, the notion of animals as holders of legal rights still seemed utopian to most. However, the idea of animal rights is not novel; it finds its early roots in the works of philosophers and social reformers such as Jeremy Bentham 2 and Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. 3 Since the advent of modern animal ethics in the late 1970s, sparked notably by Peter Singer, 4 animal rights have become widely theorized and popularized in moral philosophy. Though it has taken several decades for these philosophical developments to be reflected in legal arenas, the landscape has started to shift.

Animal law, and the corresponding academic field of legal animal studies, is flourishing. There is now a lively scholarly debate dedicated to establishing, elaborating, and advancing the theoretical foundations and practicability of legal animal rights. Moreover, animal rights are gradually beginning to emerge and solidify in case law. Most notably, courts in Argentina 5 and Colombia 6 have extended the constitutional human right to habeas corpus and the underlying right to freedom to captive animals. Furthermore, courts in India have developed case law recognizing a range of fundamental rights of animals, among them the right to life, dignity, and freedom from torture. 7 And in May 2020, the Islamabad High Court, too, recognized legal animal rights and, moreover, linked the protection of animals to the human right to life in light of the current pandemic crisis, which has highlighted the ‘interdependence of living beings’. 8 For now, these remain isolated acts of judicial recognition or creation of animal rights. The majority of the world's legal systems continue to treat animals as objects; as property. Animals are things , which can be bought, sold, owned, traded, farmed, experimented upon, killed, and eaten for the sake of human utility. Although most systems also recognize animals as deserving a certain level of protection in deference to their status as living beings capable of suffering (the welfare approach), in most places animal rights have, thus far, been seen as a radical departure from a human-centred legal order which can make use of other living and non-living resources. The aforementioned examples, along with increasing numbers of other cases elsewhere, may however represent the first manifestations of an incipient, more comprehensive formation of animal rights law.

The once quixotic idea of animal rights has thus suddenly turned into a viable legal possibility. While some still strongly object to the idea of animals having legal rights, it seems fair to say that legal animal rights are becoming mainstream. That is especially true in the world of scholarship, which continues to precede legal reality in most places: there is now a critical mass of legal scholars who endorse the possibility (or reality) of animal rights. 9 Indeed, some scholars have even gone a step further and simply take for granted that animals can, should, and do in fact, have some legal rights, and proceed to explore more refined accounts of, and also to move beyond, animal rights. Many of the articles included in this issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment reflect this development: Some of the authors argue at length that, and on what grounds, animals have rights, while others take these rights as their starting point and instead focus on their applications and implications. Still others go further, finding the notion of animal rights problematic because it does not go far enough, or builds on old ways of (Western, rationalistic, male, hegemonic) thinking that need to be decolonized, and from which animal law needs to be emancipated.

• 2 RIGHTS OF HUMANS, ANIMALS, AND NATURE: CONNECTIONS AND INTERPLAY

An overarching theme running through animal rights discourse – one popping up throughout the contributions to this edition – is the (both symbiotic and at times conflicting) relationship, and the conceptual and political kinship, between animal rights, human rights, and rights of nature. Animal rights are often discussed as a subspecies of the natural rights tradition (in the jurisprudential sense) which gave rise to the modern notion of human rights – and which has also inspired the recent movement towards the rights of rivers, mountains, and ecosystems. From its inception, the language of animal rights has relied heavily, whether explicitly or implicitly, on the conceptual vocabulary of human rights. In their theoretical framing, animal rights are typically based on the very structures and features that justify the time-honoured concept of human rights. Whether the latter are grounded in agency, personhood, basic interests and needs, capabilities, vulnerability, or precarity, the human rights framework offers fruitful points of connection and overlap with animal rights. Some core human rights, such as the rights to life, liberty, bodily integrity, and freedom from torture and inhumane treatment, can be readily rethought as animals’ rights, too.

The search for interconnections between human and animal rights may, for one thing, be driven by rhetorical or strategic motives. Human rights, as a generally well-accepted and well-established idea and institution, offer a valuable point of reference for unfolding the more junior idea of animal rights. Animal lawyers need not reinvent the wheel – rather, they can seize and adapt the available normative and regulatory toolbox, by applying, for example, established principles of (human) rights formulation, adjudication, conflict resolution, or implementation to the animal context. Familiar arguments from analogy, similarity, or consistency make use of this cross-comparative approach, and have contributed to the main building blocks of (first wave) animal rights theory. 10

But on a deeper level, viewing human and animal rights as part of the same normative project may also be undergirded by political and socio-psychological considerations. It has long been recognized in the human rights world that a key element in the power and force of human rights discourses is their extensibility. They build at a fundamental level from what is, in the animal law context, usually referred to as the argument from similarity. Arguments in favour of the rights of individuals within a more dominant or privileged strata of society often implicitly support the case for the extension of those same rights to disadvantaged or excluded groups. 11 That the very structure of human rights discourses lends itself to extension on grounds of similarity is significant, but equally important is the increasing recognition of a factual link between the concerns of human and animal rights.

From the nineteenth-century practice of including non-European peoples as exhibits in zoos, to the labelling of Rwandan Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’ in the run up to and during the Rwandan genocide, to the rhetoric of Donald Trump in relation to the migrants trying to cross the Mexico-US border, the equating of people or population groups with animals has long been a horrifyingly successful strategy on the part of those wishing to instigate or justify mass violations of human rights. 12 Furthermore, scholarship has identified significant parallels between the legal treatment of animal rights and women's rights, 13 and the weaponization of animal-use practices as a tool to further the colonization agenda by European settlers in the Americas; 14 and one of the current editors has elsewhere discussed the striking parallels between the sanitization of mass violence inherent in the regime of animal welfare law and that of international humanitarian law. 15 Increasingly, too, research in the field of social psychology is tearing down the notion that human rights and animal rights can be separated at the cognitive level: insights drawn from experimental studies suggest that the act of rationalizing and justifying the mistreatment and slaughtering of animals makes it easier for humans to rationalize acts of violence against other humans. 16

Even apart from these notable political interconnections and interlocking mechanisms of collective violence, current events strongly indicate the need for a wider view of the rights of humans. Human well-being has now to be understood as incorporating the rights and interests both of animals and of ecosystems, in recognition of the dependence of humans and human society on healthy and functioning eco- and environmental systems. There is increasingly strong evidence to suggest that the emergence of zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential (such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic) is made more likely by biodiversity loss, as the reduction in diversity of species and genotypes decreases the resilience of the natural world itself to the development of such diseases. 17 In parallel, the transfer of pathogens from animals to humans is made ever more likely by the increasingly close contact into which humans and animals are being brought by the destruction of habitats, the loss of wild spaces, urban sprawl, and live animal markets. 18 An additional, and deeply worrying, threat arises from the habitual overuse of antibiotics in modern industrial farming, which is considered to be a major factor in the rise of antibiotic resistance, and which threatens the emergence of pathogens yet more destructive than SARS-CoV-2. 19 Purely human interest would, even in the absence of any notion of animal welfare or rights, demand an urgent reassessment of humans’ relations with other species and with the natural world. A cross-comparative or more ‘holistic’ mind-set for thinking about the rights of humans, animals, and nature thus seems warranted against the backdrop of their real-life interconnectedness.

• 3 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS ISSUE

The articles in this issue of the journal have been selected to explore the increasingly close connections between animal rights in moral and ethical theory, and the treatment of animals in law. In so doing, the articles highlight manifold and deep connections between animal and human rights, at the level of cognitive frameworks and practical implementation. Although the majority of the contributions adopt or adapt human-rights-derived frameworks to the animal law context, the utility of the human rights framework in this field is also questioned, with some authors advocating a distinctive, ‘second wave’ approach.

The first two articles drill down into the fundamental questions underlying animal rights. In his article ‘Animalhood, Interests, and Rights’, Juan Pablo Mañalich argues that animals should be understood as ‘rights-subjects’. Basing his argument on the interest theory of rights, Mañalich notes that animals have intentions and therefore interests, as opposed to non-sentient living beings, which only have needs. Animals can therefore hold legal rights. Mañalich employs Michael Tooley's notion of the ‘particular-interest principle’ as a constraint for meaningful ascriptions of rights. According to the principle, beings can only hold such rights that could, at least in theory, further some of their interests. Mañalich argues that all animals which meet the criteria of ‘quasi-personhood’ should have the legal right to continued existence – the holding of which Mañalich understands as legal personhood. Thus, all animals that are quasi-persons should be recognized as legal persons from the point of birth. Furthermore, even animals that do not meet the criteria of quasi-personhood should, according to Mañalich, be recognized as holders of legal rights – though what rights such animals should hold would depend on their interests.

Joshua Jowitt, too, engages with the fundamental justification for animal rights in his contribution, ‘Legal Rights for Animals: Aspiration or Logical Necessity?’. Jowitt argues from consistency, using the moral theory of Alan Gewirth to ground animal rights in the same source as human rights. Given that all agents necessarily claim a right to enjoy the conditions enabling them to exercise their agency (and thus to have at least the potential of realizing their conception of the good), consistency requires such agents to recognize the right to the basic conditions of agency in all other prospective purposive agents: failure to do so would require them to reject the very basis they claim as sufficient for their own rights thereto. Jowitt's is an ambitious justification for the moral rights of animals, in that although it shares many of the features of the similarity approach, it goes beyond it. Rather than relying on the moral force of consistency and on arguments from hypocrisy, he argues that inconsistency would be impermissible: it would necessarily invalidate the claim being made on the part of humans to possess basic moral rights. As a result, any law that does not recognize and respect the basic rights ascribable to any and all prospective purposive agents – whatever their species – does not satisfy the criteria for validity as law at all.

In ‘Animal Rights, Legal Personhood and Cognitive Capacity: Addressing “Levelling-Down” Concerns’, Joe Wills scrutinizes a common concern levelled against animal rights: that extending rights to animals on the basis of their being sufficiently similar to so-called human ‘marginal cases’ might endanger the moral and legal status of humans, especially those with severe cognitive impairments. Wills argues that this objection against the argument from species overlap is misplaced for two reasons. First, it is conceptually ill-founded, as it misses the point that animal rights advocates rely on intellectual capacities for pragmatic rather than normative reasons and invoke capacity as a sufficient rather than as a necessary condition for personhood. Second, drawing on empirical and socio-psychological findings, Wills argues that speciesism itself operates as a multiplier of oppressive dynamics towards marginalized humans, and conversely, that non-speciesist animal rights can contribute to a more inclusive and respectful human rights culture.

In ‘The Conceptual Challenges of Invasive Alien Species to Non-Human Rights’, Guillaume Futhazar addresses the problem of the nonhuman rights collisions that inevitably arise once natural entities (such as animals and the environment) come to populate the realm of legal personhood. The case of invasive alien species perfectly exemplifies such a clash of individual animals’ right to life and an ecosystem's right to integrity. Futhazar proposes to resolve this nonhuman rights conflict by drawing on established principles governing the limitation of human rights, notably the balancing of private and public interests. Lastly, because nonhuman rights representation and adjudication necessarily remain discussions among humans, Futhazar stresses that such practices must engage in epistemic plurality in order to gain legitimacy.

In her contribution to the edition, ‘Veganism, Dairy, and Decolonization’, Maneesha Deckha examines the conflicts and confluences between animal advocacy and the rights of indigenous peoples. Engaging deeply with the history of animal use practices in the colonial era, and using the European colonization of Canada as her case study, Deckha questions the construction of an inherent opposition between vegan animal rights concerns and the traditional animal-food interests of indigenous peoples. Highlighting traditions of respect for nature and the importance of familial and mother-child bonds in many indigenous cultures in Canada, she argues that the rejection of dairy that distinguishes veganism makes it a more natural ally to the decolonization agenda than is often appreciated. She argues in favour of a reframing of veganism to highlight its rejection of the dairy industry as having the potential to bring important critical and decolonizing value convergences to the fore.

In his article ‘Second Wave Animal Ethics and (Global) Animal Law: A View from the Margins’, Iyan Offor contextualizes animal ethics in terms of two waves. Animal law scholars have, according to Offor, so far mostly based their work on utilitarian and rights-based approaches to animal ethics. However, Offor highlights numerous problems with such first-wave approaches, such as their assumption that animals deserve moral and legal consideration in virtue of being like humans, and their reliance on liberal concepts such as rights. Instead, Offor suggests that animal law scholarship would benefit greatly from second-wave, critical, intersectional animal ethics.

In the final article in the collection, ‘Is There a Need for a New, an Ecological, Understanding of Legal Animal Rights?’, Brian Favre too argues that there is a need to move beyond the traditional animal rights debate. Animal rights, he argues, offer only a short-term and partial solution to the task of integrating human and animal societies in ways that allow a mutual accommodation. Although animal rights contest the place of animals within the legal order, rights paradigms rely on the radical subjectivism that structures Western legal thought and its central, dichotomous division between ‘persons’ and ‘things’. As such, animal rights offer a ‘revolution’ only at a shallow level: they remain within the larger, dualistic and anthropocentric paradigm. In order to move beyond a wholly anthropocentric legal order, Favre argues, we need to dispense with the focus on the individual rights subject, and instead move to a complexity-responsive and situated analysis of individuals within communities, which he calls an ecological understanding of law.

Together, the papers in this issue show the maturity of the field of animal law. Animal rights are no longer to be confined to the margins of academic and broader social debate; rather, they are an essential part of the discussion on how to deal with the manifold social and ecological problems with which we are now confronted. Though they may have lost some of their radical, revolutionary flair – indeed, as this edition shows, animal rights are now seen in some quarters as the orthodoxy to be critiqued – they have gained a weight which indicates that the idea has come of age.

Particularly striking in all of the contributions to this thematic issue are the parallels between animal rights and human rights, human needs, and human well-being. Mañalich and Jowitt demonstrate that some of the major philosophical justifications for human rights must, if applied consistently, also give rise to rights for at least some animals. Wills shows that the oft-heard rebuttal – that animal rights arguments from human marginal cases threaten the rights of certain humans – is incorrectly premised and not borne out by socio-psychological evidence. Futhazar draws from the lived experience of balancing individual human rights and societal imperatives to imagine a legally mediated accommodation between animal and ecosystem rights paradigms. Deckha explores the natural convergence of interests between certain animal rights positions – primarily ethical veganism – and the decolonization agenda. And finally, though they begin from very different premises and employ different methodologies, both Offor and Favre question the value of rights frameworks, preferring instead contextual and relational understandings of law as being better suited to meeting both humans’ and animals’ needs.

Reading the articles in this collection as a set, it is clear that a sharp dichotomy between human and animals rights is not just dubious, but that there are a wealth of productive interactions to be had between lawyers working on animal rights, human rights and environmental law, both from the academic and the activist standpoints. Viewed in this way, and in addition to their own manifold contributions, the articles in this collection set out a compelling and exciting future research agenda. We look forward to seeing the results.

S Stucki, ‘Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and Fundamental Rights’ ( 2020 ) 40 OJLS .

• Search Google Scholar
• Export Citation

Bentham J , An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , ( T Payne and Son , London 1789 ).

Krause KCF , herausgegeben von KDA Röder (ed) , Das System der Rechtsphilosophie , ( Brockhaus , Leipzig 1874 ).

Singer P , Animal Liberation , ( HarperCollins , New York 1975 ).

Tercer Juzgado de Garantías de Mendoza 3 November 2016, Expte Nro P-72.254/15.

Corte Suprema de Justicia 26 July 2017, AHC4806-2017 (MP: Luis Armando Tolosa Villabona). This ruling was later reversed. Corte Suprema de Justicia 16 August 2017, STL12651-2017 (MP: Fernando Castillo Cadena). In January 2020, the Constitutional Court of Colombia decided against granting habeas corpus to the animal in question.

See, notably, Supreme Court of India 7 May 2014, civil appeal no 5387 of 2014; Kerala High Court 6 June 2000, AIR 2000 KER 340; Delhi High Court 15 May 2015, CRL MC no 2051/2015.

Islamabad High Court 21 May 2020, WP no 1155/2019; for a discussion, see

S Stucki and T Sparks, ‘The Elephant in the (Court)Room: Interdependence of Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene’ ( 2020 ) EJIL:Talk! , June 9 .

On the ‘reality’ of legal animal rights, see

Kurki Visa AJ , A Theory of Legal Personhood , ( Oxford University Press , 2019 ).

On the distinction between first wave and second wave ethical traditions see Iyan Offor in this issue.

C Gearty, ‘Do Human Rights Help or Hinder Environmental Protection?’ ( 2010 ) 1 ( 1 ) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 7 ;

Sparks T , ' ‘Protection of Animals Through Human Rights: The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights’ ', in A Peters (ed) , Studies in Global Animal Law , ( Springer Open , Berlin 2020 ).

A Peters, ‘Liberté, Égalité, Animalité: Human-Animal Comparisons in Law’ ( 2016 ) 5 TEL 25, 25, 32 – 33 .

MacKinnon Catherine , ' ‘Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights’ ', in Cass Sunstein & Martha C Nussbaum (eds) , Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions , ( Oxford University Press , 2004 ).

See Maneesha Deckha in this issue.

Stucki S , ' ‘(Certified) Human Violence? Animal Production, the Ambivalence of Humanizing the Inhumane, and What International Humanitarian Law Has to Do with It’ ', in A Peters (ed) , Studies in Global Animal Law , ( Springer Open , Berlin 2020 ).

See Joe Wills in this issue, in which Wills engages extensively with this literature; and further

W Kymlicka, ‘Human Rights Without Human Supremacism’ ( 2017 ) 48 Canadian Journal of Philosophy 763 .

For a critical take on the ‘link thesis’, see

Marceau J , Beyond Cages: Animal Law and Criminal Punishment , ( CUP , Cambridge 2019 ) 193 - 250 .

Note, though, that Marceau's primary target is the so-called ‘graduation’ or ‘escalation’ thesis, which holds that violence against animals can be a predictor of future violence against humans in a specific individual. At this individual level we accept Marceau's conclusion that the link is insufficiently definite to be a sound basis for policy. We, like Wills, do not invoke the link in this sense here, but rather refer to a societal scale malaise.

JR Rohr and others, ‘Towards Common Ground in the Biodiversity–Disease Debate’ ( 2020 ) 4 Nature Ecology & Evolution 24 ;

F Keesing and others, ‘Impacts of Biodiversity on the Emergence and Transmission of Infectious Diseases’ ( 2010 ) 468 Nature 647 .

Two States – Germany and Chile – have formally asked the IPBES to assess the link between biodiversity loss and the emergence of diseases with pandemic potential in a future report, and the UNEP has recently announced a programme of work on environmental factors in the emergence of zoonotic diseases:

United Nations Environment Programme , ‘Press Release: UNEP Steps up Work on Zoonotics, Protecting Environment to Reduce Pandemic Risks’ ( 12 May 2020 ) < https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/unep-steps-work-zoonotics-protecting-environment-reduce-pandemic > accessed 12 May 2020 .

S Díaz and others, ‘Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – Advance Version’ ( 4 May 2019 ) 22 ;

Keesing and others (n 17).

JR Rohr and others, ‘Emerging Human Infectious Diseases and the Links to Global Food Production’ ( 2019 ) 2 Nature Sustainability 445 ;

C Rochford and others, ‘Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance’ ( 2018 ) 391 The Lancet 1976 .

Content Metrics

• Climate Change
• Environmental Law
• Environmental Politics and Policy
• Human Rights

• [109.248.223.228]
• 109.248.223.228

Character limit 500 /500

Protection of Animals through Human Rights. The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-21

Published in Anne Peters (ed), Studies in Global Animal Law (Springer 2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-60756-5_13

Posted: 14 Sep 2018 Last revised: 8 May 2020

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

Date Written: September 13, 2018

This paper discusses the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law. Parts one and two of the essay take as their example the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and examine the major trends in the Court’s judgments and admissibility decisions that directly or indirectly concern the rights or welfare of animals. It is concluded that the Court is not indifferent to the welfare of animals, but that animal welfare is instrumentalised: it is understood not as a good in itself, but is instead valued for its implications for human welfare and rights. Part three of the essay then considers the obstacles that the anthropocentrism of the human rights idea and the instrumentalisation of animal concerns present to the use of human rights frameworks to further the development of global animal law, as well as the opportunities that exist in the meeting of these paradigms. It concludes that although the telos of human rights law is different from that of animal law, nevertheless there exist many overlapping concerns within which mutually beneficial interactions are possible. The paper is available open access via: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-60756-5_13

Keywords: Global Animal Law, animal welfare, animal rights, human rights, European Convention on Human Rights, anthropocentrism, instrumentalisation

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Tom Sparks (Contact Author)

Max planck institute for comparative public law and international law ( email ).

Im Neuenheimer Feld 535 69120 Heidelberg, 69120 Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.mpil.de/en/pub/institute/personnel/academic-staff/sparks-tom.cfm

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics, related ejournals, public international law: human rights ejournal.

Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic

Public International Law: Courts & Adjudication eJournal

Animal law ejournal, human rights ejournal.

Subscribe to this free journal for more curated articles on this topic

Animal Research

Animal research case studies

UCL is a leading centre for biomedical research in the UK. Scientific research is conducted not by shadowy figures in ivory towers, but by human beings working earnestly to address major issues facing society today.

Dr Clare Stanford: using mice to find treatments for ADHD

Dr Clare Stanford is a Reader in Experimental Psychopharmacology at UCL. Despite the intimidating title, Clare is a down-to-earth, compassionate researcher with a real commitment to animal welfare. She is chair of the Bloomsbury AWERB and does not hold back from questioning the ethics of research objectives , as well as the way it is carried out.

Clare is currently working on a mouse model for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This is a strongly inherited psychiatric disorder, which causes problems for patients by making them hyperactive, excessively impulsive and inattentive. ADHD is often regarded as a childhood issue, but about 65% of people carry it through to adulthood where the associated problems are far worse. It has been associated with alcohol and drug misuse in later life, and an estimated 25% of the prison population have ADHD . There is also an increased risk of other health complications, including asthma and epilepsy.

Dr Simon Waddington and Rajvinder Karda: reducing mouse use with glowing firefly genes

Although animal research remains a necessary part of modern research, current methods are far from perfect. By injecting the genes that fireflies use to emit light into newborn mice, UCL scientists have developed a way to drastically reduce the numbers of mice needed for research into disease and development.

At the moment, researchers often need to cull and perform autopsies on animals to see how diseases develop on a molecular level. This means that an animal needs to be killed for every data point recorded, so some studies might use dozens of mice to get reliable data on disease progression.

The new technique could allow researchers to get molecular-level data by simply taking a picture with specialist equipment rather than killing an animal, allowing them to get data more regularly and ethically. An experiment that previously need 60 mice can be done with around 15, and the results are more reliable.

Dr Karin Tuschl: Using zebrafish to treat a rare form of childhood Parkinsonism

Using genetically modified zebrafish, UCL scientists have identified a novel gene affected in a devastating disorder with childhood-onset Parkinsonism. Indeed, when a drug that worked in the fish was given to one of the children, she regained the ability to walk.

The research studied a group of nine children who suffered from severely disabling neurological symptoms including difficulties in walking and talking. Dr Karin Tuschl and her team at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology used state of the art genome editing in zebrafish to validate the identity of the gene affected in these children.

The scientists disrupted a gene known as slc39a14 in the fish, which is important for transporting metals in the body. Disrupting the transporter in fish led to a build up of manganese in the brain and impaired motor behaviour. As similar symptoms were seen in the patients, this confirmed that slc39A14 is required to clear manganese from the body and protect it from manganese toxicity. It also confirmed that the scientists had found the gene causing the disease in the patients.

Animal cruelty stories | RSPCA - RSPCA

• Advice and Welfare
• Ways to Give
• Get Involved
• Report a concern
• Colour mode Vivid Calm
• Useful Links
• Sponsorship
• Rehoming and Adoption
• Advice for Adopters
• Pet Insurance
• Dog Kennels
• Farm Animals
• Seasonal Advice
• Cost-of-Living Support
• All Advice and Welfare
• Beef Cattle
• Farmed Fish
• Laying Hens
• Meat Chickens
• Gift in Wills
• Lottery & Raffle
• Current Appeals
• Advice for Donors
• SMS Donations
• Donate Online
• Giving Monthly
• Payroll Giving
• Philanthropy
• Request a Gift in Will Guide
• Step-by-Step Advice
• Free Will-Writing Service
• Information for Executors
• Young People
• Ideas and Resources
• Fundraising Pack
• Young fundraisers
• Better Chicken
• Better Labels Better Choices
• Born to Suffer
• Save our Breath
• Stop Live Exports
• Big Help Out
• Types of Roles
• Volunteers' week
• Volunteering with Us
• End Cruelty
• Care For Animals
• How We Work
• Strategy to 2030
• 200th Anniversary
• Change the Law
• International Work
• Investigate Cruelty
• Prevent Suffering
• Prosecution
• Rescue Animals
• Financial Assistance
• Home for Life
• Rehabilitation
• Wildlife Centres
• Veterinary Care

Animal cruelty stories

Here you'll read stories which represent just a limited number of the animal cruelty or neglect cases that we come across on a regular basis.

Warning: You may find some of the details in these stories upsetting

Artificial badger sett built to train dogs badger baiting

Cat thrown into the air for a "prank"

A cat was thrown into the air as a "prank" with no regard for his wellbeing.

Dog survives hot car trauma

Crossbreed dog had a very lucky escape after he was spotted by members of the public left tied up in the boot of a car on a sweltering June day.

Herring gull shot dead

A 19-year-old man shot dead two adult herring gulls that were nesting with their three chicks.

Magistrate found to be neglecting her pet dogs severe skin condition

A role model for law and order was convicted for causing unnecessary suffering to her two West Highland white terriers.

Five neglected ponies

Five neglected ponies with extremely overgrown hooves were found living in a filthy barn standing on top of deep, dirty bedding.

Neglected Fell pony Jet

Fell pony Jet was in very poor body condition when our inspector first saw him.

Dog caused mental fear from abuse

Lucy was caused mental fear and terror by her owner shouting at her.

48 guinea pigs kept in inappropriate conditions

Our inspector found guinea pigs confined within plastic contains in a garden shed.

Chicken killed with crossbow

A man who shot a tethered chicken with crossbow bolts was disqualified from keeping animals for five years.

Young Jazz survives horrific abuse

Jazz was beaten, punched, kicked, strangled and thrown but survived her ordeal and has since been happily rehomed.

Lurcher left with exposed metal plate

Poor Luna was left by her owner with a metal leg plate exposed to the elements.

Investigating animal cruelty

How our inspectors investigate complaints of animal cruelty and neglect.

Preventing animal cruelty

Integer elementum dapibus arcu. Donec non ultricies quam, eu facilisis nisi. Vivamus id erat eget enim finibus suscipit. Etiam efficitur vel ipsum vitae elementum.

How the Animal Welfare Act has evolved over the decades and what still needs to be done

What is the Animal Welfare Act and how does it work? We dive into the history and future of this landmark legislation.

In 1966, amid a growing clamor from the American public and Congress to do something about the shady business of family pets being stolen and sold to research facilities, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act into law.

Amended several times over the years, the landmark law (renamed simply the Animal Welfare Act in 1970) sets standards for the humane care and treatment of animals in the U.S. It has drawn praise from animal welfare advocates for the protections it provides but also criticism for its shortcomings.

Broadly, the AWA sets care standards for certain animals, including those who are exhibited to the public (such as at zoos), sold as pets, used in research or transported commercially. The AWA doesn’t cover animals used for food, fur or other agricultural purposes, nor does it pertain to privately owned pets, carriage horses or hunting activities. (State and local governments often regulate hunting and the treatment of farm animals and pets.)

Bernard Unti, a historian and senior communications strategist for the Humane Society of the United States, says the AWA is likely to continue changing. “I see the law as a very promising, future-focused vehicle for additional animal welfare reforms. I’m quite optimistic about it.”

Here we examine the milestones in the AWA’s history and the prospects for future improvements.  

The law and its limits

As he approved the new law in 1966, Johnson quoted humanitarian philosopher Albert Schweitzer, stating, “The quality of a culture is measured by its reverence for all life.”

But Johnson also outlined the new law’s limits. The law didn’t aim to protect all animals or end the practice of animals being used in research. Scientific and medical progress, the president said, requires the use of animals in research, “and this bill does not interfere with that.”

Nearly six decades after its historic passage, the law is still toggling between the high-mindedness of the Schweitzer quote and the reality that the AWA has done a less-than-perfect job of safeguarding animals in the United States. Advocates have praised the AWA for protecting some animals but criticized it for excluding other species. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the law through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, has come under fire from advocates who assert the agency does a spotty job.   

“My overall opinion is that the Animal Welfare Act is necessary. There are people who have discussed, theoretically, maybe we should have some sort of different model, but no one's been able to come up with what the substitute would be,” says John Goodwin, senior director of the Stop Puppy Mills campaign at the Humane Society of the United States. “But the standards of care for dogs are incredibly low.”

Goodwin, whose team fights inhumane conditions at mass dog-breeding facilities, notes that a pet owner who keeps a dog in a cage that’s only 6 inches longer than the animal’s body for lengthy periods could be charged criminally in many states, yet such a practice is allowed for commercial breeders under the AWA regulations.

Beyond that, Goodwin says federal enforcement of the AWA “leaves a lot to be desired.” For example, the Stop Puppy Mills team reads hundreds of federal and state inspection reports yearly to assemble the annual HSUS Horrible Hundred report on problem puppy mills. Some dealers who have been cited in the report many times are still licensed by the USDA, despite years of recurring violations.

In the case of animals used in research, advocates argue that the AWA is failing to provide minimal protection for more than 90% of them.

The original law was expanded in 1970 to protect warm-blooded animals used in experiments. But the following year, the USDA omitted mice, rats and birds from the AWA regulations. In 2000, the USDA settled a lawsuit, agreeing to provide coverage for these species, but Congress intervened, amending the AWA in 2002 to specifically exclude birds, rats and mice bred for use in research from the AWA’s definition of animal.

“That was obviously a huge blow,” says Vicki Katrinak, director of animal research and testing for the HSUS. “If you’re not including them in the Animal Welfare Act, you’re not protecting them with the minimal standards of care.”

Justice for 4,200-plus beagles

Despite its flaws, the AWA has the power to bring bad actors to justice and spur positive change for animals—sometimes in a very big way.

In 2022, authorities investigated the Envigo RMS facility in Cumberland, Virginia, which was breeding beagles for research. Inspectors found puppies in acute distress; dogs being killed instead of receiving veterinary care; nursing mother beagles being denied food; and food containing maggots, mold and feces. Envigo was cited for numerous violations of the AWA, and the HSUS helped remove and find homes through our shelter partners for the 4,200-plus beagles being kept at the facility.

In June 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Envigo’s parent company, Inotiv, will pay an $11 million fine for its AWA violations—the largest penalty in the law’s history.

The fine “demonstrates that there can be severe consequences for violating the Animal Welfare Act and shows that the Department of Justice takes its role seriously in protecting animals and the environment,” says Adam Parascandola, vice president of the HSUS Animal Rescue Team. “After years of too often seeing violations of the Animal Welfare Act left unaddressed, this case has shown that the act can provide robust protections for animals under its purview when vigorously enforced.”

“It’s a historically significant moment,” adds Unti. “It reinforces a cherished public principle: that institutional cruelty is not exempt from the moral scrutiny of the larger society.”

Key moments in the history of the Animal Welfare Act

• June 1965: Pepper, a dalmatian in rural Pennsylvania, is stolen from her family and sold to a research hospital in New York City, where she dies in a surgical experiment. After hearing about the stolen dog, a New York congressman introduces a bill to require dog and cat dealers and the laboratories that buy animals to be licensed and inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• November 1965: Pepper’s story prompts an article in Sports Illustrated magazine, “The Lost Pets That Stray to the Labs.” Author Coles Phinizy notes that “many pet dogs are being stolen from the front lawns and sidewalks of this country” to meet the “constant and growing need for laboratory animals.”
• February 1966: LIFE magazine publishes “Concentration Camps for Dogs,” an article accompanied by photos of dogs on their way to research facilities being kept in dealers’ “unspeakably filthy compounds.” The eight-page magazine spread sparks a huge number of letters from the magazine’s outraged readers.
• August 1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, which aims to prevent the sale or use of stolen pets and establishes licensing for dog and cat dealers. HSUS investigations of dog dealers and testimony before Congress helped spur the bill’s passage. The new law regulates the transport, sale and handling of animals before research, covering dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, hamsters and rabbits.
• December 1970: Renamed the Animal Welfare Act, the law expands to cover all warm-blooded animals used for research, testing, experimentation or exhibition. (Horses and farm animals not used for research are exempted.) The amended law also expands the definition of a research facility and broadens “adequate veterinary care” to include the use of anesthetics and tranquilizers and extends coverage to animals used by circuses and zoos.
• December 1971: The U.S. secretary of agriculture initiates regulations to specifically exclude rats, mice, birds, horses and farm animals from the definition of an “animal.” Though these species had not previously been regulated under the AWA, the new regulations codify their exclusion.
• April 1976: AWA amendments expand the definition of a “carrier” to include all forms of commercial enterprises that transport animals, while also establishing care standards for animals being transported. To combat animal fighting, the revised AWA outlaws interstate and foreign transport for that purpose.
• December 1985: In response to an undercover investigation that revealed AWA violations at laboratories, the law is amended to include new requirements for labs to enrich the lives of nonhuman primates, provide exercise for dogs and consider alternatives to painful procedures. In addition, committees are created to oversee animal care at each institution that uses regulated animals.
• November 1990: To help people reclaim their lost pets and prevent stolen animals from ending up in labs, Congress adds a requirement to the AWA that dogs and cats at animal shelters be held there for a minimum of five days before being sold to a research facility.
• September 2000: The USDA settles a lawsuit, agreeing to implement regulations to cover birds, rats and mice.

• May 2002: In a move criticized by animal advocates, Congress amended the AWA to exclude birds, rats and mice bred for use in research from the definition of “animals” protected by the law.
• May 2007: AWA amendments make it illegal to buy, sell or transport the knives, gaffs or other sharp instruments that are attached to the legs of birds used for cockfighting.
• June 2008: The AWA strengthens the definitions of and penalties for animal fighting. And dogs imported to the U.S. for resale are required to be at least 6 months old and in good health, with all the necessary vaccinations.
• January 2019: AWA amendments prohibit animal fighting in U.S. territories including Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Previously, local laws permitted the practice.
• June 2024: Inotiv, the parent company of Envigo RMS, which surrendered more than 4,200 beagles from its research breeding facility in Virginia in 2022 amid charges of mistreatment, pleads guilty to conspiring to knowingly violate the AWA. Inotiv agrees to pay $11 million for AWA violations—the largest fine ever for an AWA case. As part of the plea agreement announced by the U.S. Department of Justice, Inotiv and its related entities will no longer breed or sell dogs. The HSUS had teamed with the DOJ and our rescue partners in 2022 to help remove the 4,200-plus beagles from the Inotiv/Envigo facility and place them into adoptive homes.

What’s next?

The Envigo case highlighted the power of collaboration between federal agencies to help protect animals. Advocates say such efforts would be even further enhanced by the Better Collaboration, Accountability, and Regulatory Enforcement (CARE) for Animals Act, which was introduced in Congress in 2023 and has broad bipartisan support.

The bill would help ensure that the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Justice collaborate on federal animal welfare cases, explains Tracie Letterman, vice president of federal affairs for the Humane Society Legislative Fund. The Better CARE for Animals Act would provide the Department of Justice with information on AWA violators and additional enforcement remedies under the law. For example, in cases where animals are being mistreated, the bill would authorize the Department of Justice to revoke licenses, issue civil penalties and seize animals.

“It’s important to enhance that interagency collaboration to make sure that the Department of Justice has the information it needs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the most severe AWA violators in order to bring cases,” Letterman says. “The USDA needs help, because there are just too many egregious violators that are continuing to operate.”

Ask your elected members of Congress to support the Better CARE for Animals Act and help strengthen the Animal Welfare Act. Take Action

Want more content like this?

This was written and produced by the team behind All Animals , our award-winning magazine. Each issue is packed with inspiring stories about how we are changing the world for animals together.

Jump to navigation

Animal Welfare Act: Related Cases

Full Site Search

11 years 🥳 of Publication

• Law Firm & In-house Updates
• Read to know

15 Landmark Judgement of Indian Judiciary on Animal Rights

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated- Mahatma Gandhi.”

India is a country which houses varied cultures, wildlife conservation programs and also gives utmost importance to environmental protection. It has been working towards making the environment sustainable for all living organisms since ages. Environmental conservation and the protection for wildlife has been anchored deeply in the roots of India’s adoration and devotion for nature. India has a firm adoration and is certainly devoted towards serving and caring for the mother nature. India’s love and adoration for the conservation of nature and protection of animal welfare can be traced all the way back to the colonial times. A lot of provisions were enacted with regards to the protection of animals. These provisions were specifically designed to recognize and juxtapose the rights of the animals with the rights which were guaranteed to the humans. These laws and measures were enacted as a result of the destruction which was caused in India post the British rule, because the British had perpetrated a lot of mayhem and massacre by their haphazard and wanton hunting practices. After India got its independence from the British, the legislature introduced a number of measures with regards to animal welfare on a national scale. This was done by the then government in power in order to ensure that non-human beings too live a life with dignity just like how humans do. This was done on a national level in order to protect and secure the well-being of animals by juxtaposing their rights with the rights of the humans. The judiciary of India has particularly played a major role with regards to the enforcement and applicability of laws which protect animal rights. The Indian judiciary has time and again stood up for this cause and ensured on a number of occasions that animals are not subjected to cruelty by humans. If at all, they are subjected to any sort of cruelty, then, the judiciary has on numerous occasions taken strict actions upon such individuals ensuring that they do not subject to animal cruelty again and this way it has taken up and supported the cause of animal welfare time and again.

Animal Welfare and the protection of animals has been given utmost importance by the Judiciary and the Legislature as animals are living creatures who cannot express in words what they may go through and it is extremely crucial to support animal rights just like how human rights are supported. Animal welfare has not exactly reached its zenith, however, the judiciary is constantly striving to uphold the rights of these creatures who may be vulnerable to violence on purpose by humans. If at all animals are neglected by humans or are subjected to violence on purpose, then such treatment which is meted out to them can be regarded as animal cruelty. Animal rights are advocated and supported by the judiciary and the legislature in the same way as human rights because it is quite imperative to safeguard and protect animals from oppression, confinement and the abusive treatment which they may be prone to suffer at the hands of the human beings. There are constant conflicts arising between human and animals and they are certainly rising in number with each passing day, which is exactly why it is the job of the judiciary to provide emphasis on animal rights as animal rights can be deemed to be regarded as the voice given to the animals to interact and co-exist with human beings amicably.

This article aims to provide an insight into the various conflicts which have arisen between animals and humans. It also talks specifically with regards to how the judiciary has played an important part in these issues and how it has time and again focused on providing justice to these creatures who cannot speak, enforcing animal rights and juxtaposing animal rights on the same level as human rights. India is one of the many countries that have an animal welfare law in place and these laws are drafted with the necessary provisions relating to Animal Rights which are even enumerated in the Constitution. The Indian Constitution too deals with the protection of rights of animals and certain provisions with regards to the protection of animals are provided under the Fundamental Duties and under the ambit of the Directive Principles of the State Policy. Article 51(A) of the Constitution of India deals with Fundamental Duties. Article 51(A)(g) provides, “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India- to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures.”[1] Similarly, Article 48A of the Directive Principles of the State Policy elucidates, “Protection and improvement of the environment and safeguarding of forests and the wildlife-The State shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and the wildlife of the country.” [2]

It is essential to understand that every individual who is a citizen of India enjoys absolute fundamental rights conferred under Part III of the Constitution of India. Subsequently, the animals who are living species, need to be protected and the humans as a community need to understand and consider their well-being and protect them from all sorts of inhibitions.[3] Every living thing has a right to life and security, subject to the laws of the land which includes depriving its life, out of human necessity. Article 21 of the Constitution, while safeguarding the rights of humans, protects life and the word, “life” has been given an expanded definition and any disturbance from the basic environment which includes all forms of life, including animal life, which is necessary for human life, fall within the ambit of Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The Right to dignity and fair treatment is, therefore, not just confined to humans, but also to animals.

India is still in its infancy when it comes to dealing with the laws protecting animal rights. There is the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Rights Act, 1960, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and a few provisions of the Constitution of India which protect animal rights, however, there does exist a dire need for the enforcement of a new set of laws with the ever-increasing number of conflicts arising between animals and humans. However, these laws at present are not sufficient enough to protect the rights of animals. Regardless of that, the Indian Judiciary has done a tremendous job in filling the gaps which exist in these animal welfare laws and has time and again protected the rights of the animals significantly.

Here are the 15 Landmark Judgements wherein the courts have played a phenomenal role by transforming environmental jurisprudence in India and protecting the rights of animals and securing the environment.

1.      State of Bihar v. Murad Ali Baig, AIR 1989 SC 1.

This case dealt with the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. It specifically dealt with the hunting of elephants and whether the hunting of elephants is justified under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code and under the necessary provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act. The word, “hunting” has been defined under Section 2(16) of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 as follows: “Hunting means- i) the killing or poisoning of any wild animal or captive animal as well as an attempt to do so; ii) capturing, coursing, snaring, trapping, driving or baiting any animal as well as any attempt to do so; iii) injuring or destroying or taking any part of the body of any such animal; iv) in the case of wild birds or reptiles, damaging the eggs of such birds or reptiles or disturbing the eggs or nests of such birds or reptiles.” [4]  The case further dealt with the provisions of Section 9 of the Act which lays down that, “No person shall hunt any wild animals specified in Schedules I, II, III and IV except as provided under Section 11 and 12 of the Act.” [5]

Emphasis was laid upon the provisions of Section 11 and 12 of the Act, which provides a Schedule. Schedule I of the act contained a list of animals, amphibians, reptiles, fishes, birds and insects, e.g. Himalayan Brown Bears, Black Bucks, Cheetahs, elephants, crocodiles, pythons, whale sharks, sea horses, vultures, etc. Schedule II of the act covered animals like the Bengal Porcupine, wild dogs, chameleons, etc. Schedule III of the act covered animals like the barking deer, hog deer, hyenas, etc, however, the Schedule IV covered under its scope hares, pole cats, Indian porcupines and a lot of other species of birds like the cranes, the cuckoos and the bulbuls.

The Supreme Court in this case, held that since the elephant was an animal which fell under the scope and list of animals provided under the Schedule I, it can be assumed that the hunting of elephants is prohibited. The Court was also of the view that the offense of, “hunting” as defined under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, is not the same as the offense which is committed under Section 429 of the Indian Penal Code (which provides for the punishment for killing, poisoning, maiming, etc. of any elephants, camel, horse and other animals, the list of which is provided under the ambit of the said section.) The Supreme Court was of the view that the ingredients of the offense provided under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 is quite contrary to the ingredients of the offense provided under the scope and ambit of the Indian Penal Code and hence the two offenses are not the same.

2.      Tilak Bahadur Rai v. State of Arunachal Pradesh, 1979 Cr. L.J. 1404.

In this case, the accused shot and killed a Tiger. It was held by the court that while taking a decision with regards to whether the accused acted in good faith or not when he killed a wild animal, it is imperative to understand the nature and the dangers that lurked around the accused and under what circumstances did the accused kill the animal. After due deliberations and arguments put forth by both the parties, the Court was of the view that the accused shot the tiger that charged at him in good faith and as a means to protect himself. The Court was of the view that if the accused hadn’t shot the tiger which was charging towards him, planning to attack him, then the accused would have been dead. Therefore, in order to protect himself, he shot the tiger and this can be amounted as self-defense and was, therefore, justified. It was also clarified in this judgement that if any animal is killed or wounded as by an individual as a means to protect himself, then such animal is the property of the government. The individual who has shot or killed or injured the animal has no claim on such an animal.

3.      Tarun Bharat Sangh, Alwar v. Union of India (1992 Supp (2) SCC 448)

In this case, a social action group, a voluntary organization, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, claiming that the Rajasthan State Government had issued a number of Notifications declaring the Sariska Tiger Park as a sanctuary, however, the petitioner was of the view that there was widespread illegal mining activity going on in the aforesaid area and the State Government had issued licenses for carrying out such mining activities. It was held by the petitioner that there were a number of notifications issued previously which prohibited all sorts of mining activities in that area, however, the State Government of Rajasthan granted hundreds of licenses for conducting mining activities. The mining of marble, dolomite and other materials was being carried out which was deemed to be in total contravention to the guidelines which were laid down in the Notifications which were issued previously. The petitioner contended that these mining activities impaired the environment and the wildlife within the park. The Court then decided to appoint a committee which would study and understand the objective of the various acts and Notifications which were issued in respect of the particular protected area. The committee found that there were 215 mines which completely fell outside the areas which were deemed to be declared as protected forest, while the other 47 mines fell partially under the ambit and partially outside the ambit of the areas declared as protected forest. The Court was of the view that this was a simple matter wherein it was the job of the court to simply ensure whether the laws which were enacted in that particular area were being adhered to or not and it was the duty of the State to protect the environment and the ecology of the impugned area in question. The Supreme Court took cognizance of this situation and passed an order which directed that no mining operations could be conducted any further within the area which was demarcated as, “protected”. It also went on to further appoint a Committee headed by a retired judge to ensure that the wild life within the park is secure.  Besides this, it directed that all the mining activities which were conducted in the mines which were located outside the protected forest areas, but within the territorial boundaries of the tiger reserve could continue for a period of four months, however, if no permission is obtained by the miners within a period of four months, then mining activities in the entire area which was declared as a tiger reserve had to be stopped for good.

4.      Naveen Raheja v. Union of India [(2001) 9 SCC 762].

In this case, the Supreme Court dealt with a gruesome issue. The issue was with regards to the skinning of a tiger in a zoo in Andhra Pradesh. The Supreme Court was in utter shock and dismay when it first heard the facts of the case. The Court was utterly tormented at the fact that such a gruesome act was indulged into by humans, rendering the voiceless animal helpless and in sheer pain and agony. The tiger received no protection from those whose duty it was to protect it and look after its well-being. The Top court of India, therefore, was of the view that it was extremely necessary to summon the chairperson of the Central Zoo Authority to appear before the court in person and to elucidate on what steps and measures were being taken to protect and preserve the tiger population in zoos and reserved forests. The Supreme Court then passed appropriate orders in the said issue and gave the necessary orders with regards to the protection of tigers. The Supreme Court elucidated that it is necessary for the Central Zoo Authority to take cognizance of this issue and take the necessary steps in order to protect the plight of these voiceless creatures as the situation in which they are is quite distressful and far from satisfactory.

5.      Ivory Traders and Manufacturers Association v. Union of India, AIR 1997 Del 267)

In this case, the petitioners were challenging the ban which was imposed upon them by the authorities for them having possession of mammoth ivory and articles made from mammoth ivory. The Petitioners in this petition which they had filed also challenged certain amendments which were made in the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 whereby the trade of imported ivory articles was banned. The main contention of the Petitioners in this case was that they did not fall under the necessary provisions as provided under the ambit of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and they were not even covered by the Amendment Act No. 44 of 1991. The Petitioners were mainly aggrieved by the ban which was imposed by the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 1991, which curtailed them from trading and storing in ivory which was extracted from African Elephants. They contended that they dealt in the ivory which was legally sent to India and they were simply traders, causing no harm thereby to the African Elephants. They challenged the constitutional validity of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 1991 on the grounds that it violated their right to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business as guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India.[6]  A full bench of the Delhi High Court presided over this case and held that a ban which was imposed, imposing restrictions upon the sale and the trade of ivory products cannot be deemed to be regarded as unreasonable and unconstitutional. The Court was of the view that the restriction which was imposed under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and the Amendment to the Act was in consonance to the provisions of the Constitution and were not ultra vires the provisions of the Constitution. The restriction which was imposed upon the sale and the storage of ivory goods was a reasonable restriction on the fundamental right to carry on business. The Court was of the opinion that a law which is made to protect an animal who is at the brink of extinction, cannot be regarded as ultra vires to the provisions of the Constitution and the said amendment was done keeping in mind the protection of the endangered species. The Court held that such a law cannot be deemed to be regarded in contravention to the provisions guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India.

6.      Rajendra Kumar v. Union of India, AIR 1998 Raj. 165.

In this case, the petitioner challenged the constitutional validity of Sections 5, 27,33,34,35 and 37 of the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 1991, Amendment Act No. 44 of 1991, alleging that the impugned sections of the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act were ultra vires the provisions of the Constitution of India. The petitioner was of the view that the aforementioned sections of the impugned act, violated his Fundamental Right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India.[7]  The Petitioner was a trader of ivory products and the amendment which has been referred to above banned the sale and trade of Ivory products and articles made out of ivory. The Petitioner was of the view that his livelihood was lost and contended that the ivory which he traded in was extracted from mammoths, who became extinct 17,000 years ago and the mammoths are an entirely different species as compared to the African and Indian Elephants. He elucidated upon the fact that the export of items made out of ivory was very much prevalent and it was demanded in huge quantities in the west. He went on to contend that the sale and trade of ivory products is an integral part of the Indian Culture and relates to the work of Indian Craftsmen and it is the only and perhaps the major source of income for these craftsmen. He further contended that if the ban is imposed on the trade of ivory products then it could further lead to a rapid increase in the poaching of Indian Elephants. The Petitioner was of the view that the ivory which is extracted from mammoth, an extinct species does not fall under the ambit and scope of the Wildlife Protection Act. The Petitioner submitted that because of a ban which has been imposed the dealers in mammoth ivory have too stopped dealing in ivory. The Rajasthan High Court after hearing the contentions laid down by the Petitioner, came to the conclusion that the ban which was imposed, imposing restrictions upon the sale and the trade of ivory products cannot be deemed to be regarded as unreasonable and unconstitutional. The Court was of the view that the restriction which was imposed under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and the Amendment to the Act was in consonance to the provisions of the Constitution and were not ultra vires the provisions of the Constitution. The restriction which was imposed upon the sale and the storage of ivory goods was a reasonable restriction on the fundamental right to carry on business. The Rajasthan High Court decided to uphold the constitutional validity of the ban, and held that such a ban was necessary and was passed in light of the provisions enumerated under the International Convention, namely the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

7.      Animal Welfare of India v. A Nagaraja and Ors, 595 (2014) 7 SCC.

The traditional sport of Jalikattu, which is practiced in the State of Tamil Nadu as a part of a ritual during the Pongal festival every year in January was brought under the scanner of the Madras High Court and the validity and the constitutionality of the traditional sport was challenged. The traditional sport of Jalikattu which was put to question in this case involved a series of fights between robust bulls. These robust bulls were released into the crowd of participants who tried to hold onto the fierce bulls. Whoever could fight the bulls and reach the finish line, was awarded prizes which were sponsored by the various sponsors of the festival. This was on the similar lines to the bull fights which have been utterly famous in other countries like Spain and Italy. A lot of people, right from the participants to the spectators, usually ended up injuring themselves in the process of fighting with the raging bulls. In fact, because of this, the bulls were also subjected to harsh and poor treatment at the hands of the participants. There were a lot of reports circulated with regards to the bulls being violently abused by participants and these reports made their way to the Animal Welfare Associations. The Animal Right Activists decided to take a prompt decision and curtail the practice of Jallikattu in the State of Tamil Nadu, calling for a blanket ban on the practice of this horrific sport. As a result of this, the supporters of the Jallikattu event held that it was unethical on the part of the Animal Welfare Association and the Animal Rights Activists, to deprive individuals from practicing their age old ancient customs. The supporters of the event were of the view that imposing a blanket ban on the said event was unconstitutional and an unreasonable act thereby violating their fundamental rights which were guaranteed to them under Article 25[8] and 26[9] of the Constitution of India. The supporters of the event further contended that, as it is an ancient practice which incentivizes the retention of native breeds of bulls like the Kangayam and Pulikulam breeds. They were of the view that the native breeds belonging to the State of Tamil Nadu are hardier drought beasts that are deemed to be regarded as more affordable and are easier for the local farmers in the State of Tamil Nadu to afford. However, a case was filed by the Animal Welfare Board of India in the Honorable Supreme Court of India, seeking a blanket ban on the ancient traditional sport. The Supreme Court ruled in the favor of the supporters and submitted that the age old practice of Jalikattu should be permitted, however, subject to certain conditions which were laid down by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that the Animal Welfare Board would act as a watchdog and would closely monitor the sporting event, in order to ensure that the bulls are being treated properly by the participants, thereby ensuring that the bulls are safe and if any mishap occurs, then the Animal Welfare Board could take actions according to the gravity of the incident. Then, in the 2011, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, issued a notification asking the organizers of the Jalikattu Event to ban the use of bulls as performing animals and the Ministry with the said notification also provided that the said sporting shall be banned henceforth. Despite this notification, the organizers of Jalikattu continued practicing their age old traditional sport and used bulls as the participating animals. In fact, they continued to practice their age old customary sport with the help of the Tamil Nadu State Government’s backing. The Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act was passed and they continued playing this sport every year, using bulls as participating animals and subjecting them to cruelty. However, in the year 2014, the Supreme Court in response held that the state law passed by the State of Tamil Nadu was unconstitutional and unreasonable. It provided instructions to the Union Government to amend the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty Act (PCA), 1960, and laid down guidelines stating that, “bulls” shall be included under the ambit of the Act. Going against the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Ministry of Environment and Forests further went on to issue a notification in January, 2016, again providing a green signal to the organizers of the Jallikattu event to practice the ancient sport. However, the Animal Welfare Board and PETA India decided to take cognizance of the said issue and again on 14th January, 2016, they filed a number of pleas in the Apex Court, praying that the Supreme Court issues a stay order on the Government notification and upholds the ban. The decision which was passed by the Supreme Court, created a huge mess and lead to a strife between the locals and the authorities. The supporters of the event came out in huge numbers to support their age-old custom and traditional practice, by carrying out large scale protests. The protests emerged because the supporters of the event were thoroughly determined to make sure that the Supreme Court agrees to their views and understands that it is violating their fundamental rights. A lot of protests took place against the Apex Court’s decision, several members and participants of the Jallikattu were even arrested and detained by the Police Authorities. On 26th July, 2016, the apex court maintained its stand and refused to lift the ban on the practice of the Jallikattu event, when a review petition calling the ban as unconstitutional and unreasonable was filed by the Tamil Nadu Governor. As a result, the protests continued and a lot of people were arrested and put behind bars. The Tamil Nadu Governor with the help of the Center decided to pass an Ordinance which would allow the practice of the Jallikattu Events. The State Government also passed a new piece of legislation simultaneously, which received the assent of the Center. This new piece of legislation had a provision which exempted and removed Jallikattu events from the scope of the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty Act, 1960. The legal battle with regards to the Jallikattu event is still going on and continues to remain unresolved till date, with the question of its legality popping up each time it is taken up for deliberation. Despite all of these legal challenges which were brought upon this age-old practice, the sporting event is still practiced and played with utmost zeal and enthusiasm by the natives and indigenous population of Tamil Nadu. In fact, it is quite imperative to understand that before all these legal challenges were brought upon this age-old practice, the sporting event was only practiced in a few areas, however, as a result of the emergence of the legal battle, this sporting event gained prominence and has provided this event a massive sporting impetus. The Jallikattu event is now organized in an extravagant manner, the organizers are exorbitantly spending huge sums, despite the regulation and the ban which has been placed on it by the Supreme Court of India. The matter was even referred to a Constitutional Bench. A lot of questions were later raised with regards to whether this sporting activity, which is a part of the tradition of the indigenous people belonging to the State of Tamil Nadu, can be protected under the Constitution of India and whether it could fall under the ambit of Article 29(1) of the Constitution and whether the event could receive such protection under the scope of the Fundamental Rights.

8.      People for Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Union of India, Writ Petition (PIL) (Lodging) No. 2490 of 2004.

In this case, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a Writ Petition in the Bombay High Court against granting of a censorship certificate to a film titled, “Taj Mahal” under the Cinematography Act, 1952. PETA was of the view that protecting the welfare of animals is a stated constitutional goal embodied in Article 51A (g) and is a matter of legislative policy under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.[10]  PETA’s main allegation and the contention which was put forth by it was that there was an utter violation of the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and there was also a violation of the provisions of the Performing Animals Registration Rules, 2001, and these violations were made by the makers of the film, “Taj Mahal” during the shoot of the film. PETA was of the view that a film which wishes to use an animal needs to obtain a no-objection certificate from the Animal Welfare Board of India as it is deemed to regarded as a pre-requisite before the Central Board of Censorship grants the certificate of censorship to the particular movie. The High Court, in this case, ruled in favor of PETA and held that for any movie which aims or wishes to use an animal, it is a pre-requisite which is of utmost importance and needs to followed by every movie, that is, they firstly need to obtain a certificate from the Animal Welfare Board of India, which contains the various provisions of the Performing Animals Registration Rules, 2001. The Welfare Board would check whether the film which aims to use an animal in the course of its shooting, is not subjecting the animal to cruelty and is taking proper care of the animal. The Animal Welfare Board would then scrutinize whether the makers of the particular film are adhering to all the provisions as per laid down under the various sections of the Performing Animals (Registration) Rules, 2001 and at the same time whether they are adhering and following the various provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. This ruling which was passed by the Bombay High Court in 2006, acted as protection to non-human living beings from being exploited or being subjected to cruelty during the course of the shooting, which usually tends to go on for very long hours. The aforesaid ruling of the Bombay High Court prevented animals from abuses and cruelty. At the same time, the makers of films then became extremely cautious while treating animals on set and during shoots. They provided them with food, water, shelter and ensured that they were not subjected to any sorts of cruelty from any members of the crew.

9.      Ozair Hussain vs. Union of India, Civil Writ Petition No. 837 of 2001.

In this case, the Petitioner filed a writ petition seeking a direction to the respondents to protect the rights of various individuals who are severely against the use of animal and animal products, by making it compulsory for the manufacturers to print on their packaging, a list of contents that go into manufacturing a product. This will enable the consumers to make an informed choice when they tend to buy various products. The Petitioner further demanded that the respondents shall provide and disclose without any haste, the complete list of ingredients on the packets of the cosmetics, drugs and food items which it sells. If it uses any animal oil or animal meat, then it should be a compulsion for such companies to clearly mention the usage of such materials on the packaging of its goods. Further, the petitioner contended that it should be made necessary for companies who manufacture cosmetics, drugs and products made from animals to put a sign on the packaging of its product, which should be easily identifiable and should convey that it has an animal ingredient prevalent in it. The Petitioner contended that 60% of Indians are vegetarians and therefore it is imperative for manufacturers to specify the contents and the ingredients that they use in the manufacturing of their products, so that it would help the individuals to make the proper choice when it comes to the consumption of products and they could rely on products which are in consonance with their believes and opinions. The Petitioner was an animal welfare volunteer and a member of a number of animal welfare organizations. He was also a conscientious objector when it came to the consumption and use of animals and their remains for food, cosmetics and drugs. The Petitioner’s main contention was that there should be a full disclosure made by the various companies manufacturing cosmetics and food products and that such products made by them should have an easily identifiable mark upon them which would convey the origin or the ingredients of their products, showing whether their products are vegetarian or non-vegetarian. This would enable any person, be it an illiterate person or a literate person, to make informed choices before selecting the products. The Petitioner prayed that Articles 19(1)(a), 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India and even the Preamble to the Constitution of India demands the full disclosure of information. In a nutshell, the main contention of the Petitioner was whether the provisions of the Constitution mandate disclosure of information. The Delhi High Court, taking into consideration the provisions of Article 19(1)(a) which deals with the freedom of speech and expression and also taking into consideration, the provisions of Article 10(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, declared that the packaging of various food items, drugs (except those which fall under the scope of life saving drugs), cosmetics, shall contain a full disclosure, providing the complete list of ingredients that go into the manufacturing of the product. It should contain information with regards to whether it is a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian item. All items of food that contain whole or a part of any animal, except milk, shall be identified by a brown circle within a square outline showing that it is a non-vegetarian food item. Similarly, the products which do not contain any animal product, shall be identified by a green circle with a square outline, showing that it is a vegetarian food item. The reason behind this judgement was that an individual’s freedom of speech and expression is extended to his/her food choices as well and therefore, the judgement laid down by the Delhi High Court in this case, enables the citizens to make informed choices with regards to the products they buy and they consume.

10.  Gauri Maulekhi v. Union of India, Writ Petition (PIL) No. 77 of 2010.

This case dealt with the illegal export of cattle and buffaloes from India to Nepal. In Nepal, the Gadhimai festival is celebrated every five years. This festival, which is a tradition followed by the indigenous population of the Bara District of Nepal; wherein they sacrifice a number of animals such as buffaloes, rats, goats, pigs, birds, et cetera. They sacrifice these animals with the aim that the sacrifice will help them fulfill their wishes. The animal sacrifice which is undertaken in the Gadhmai Festival could be regarded as one of the world’s largest animal sacrifices ever. Before the commencement of the Gadhmai Festival, a huge number of animals are usually exported from India to Nepal. These animals are then used by the indigenous population of Nepal for sacrificing with the aim that it would fulfil their wishes. However, in this case, in 2014, the Supreme Court of India before the Gadhimai Festival in Nepal, vide its order dated 17th October, 2014, directed that the Central Government of India shall ensure that no cattle and buffaloes are transported to Nepal illegally. The Supreme Court of India laid down this order in line with the provisions of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992, which conferred the powers upon the Central Government of India to look into the export and import policy and alter it according to the need of the hour. This power is conferred upon the Central Government as provided under the provisions of Section 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992.[11]  The Court further relied upon the Schedule 2 at serial no. 10 of Table-B of the Act and provided that live cattle and buffalo fall under the scope and the ambit of animals who cannot be exported without the exporter having a license to export them. The Supreme Court also laid emphasis on Section 11(3)(e) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. The court was of the view that, “by reason of Section 11(3)(e) of the Act, commission or omission of any act in course of destruction of any animal in question cruelly, unless, of course, such destruction or preparation was accompanied by the infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering.”[12]  The Court was of the view that unnecessary pain or suffering cannot be inflicted upon any non-human living beings simply to satisfy the desires of humans. It was also held by the court that sacrificing an animal can no way be deemed to be regarded as a means to appease the Gods. Before the passing of this judgement, Sahastra Seema Bal collaborated with the petitioner to make a set of rules and regulations which need to be strictly adhered to when dealing with issues in the animal markets and the cattle markets. These set of rules and regulations which were laid down by the petitioner in collaboration with Sahastra Seema Bal was declared to be certified by the Court and the Court in its judgement, laid emphasis on the fact that the recommendations provided in these regulations need to be strictly followed and adhered to.

11.  N.R. Nair and Ors. v. Union of India and Ors, Civil Appeal Nos. 3609-3620 of 2001, decided on May 1, 2001.

The main challenge in this appeal which was faced by the Supreme Court was the special leave granted by the Kerala High Court. The Kerala High Court pronounced a decision in this case and upheld a notification which was issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which stated that bears, monkeys, tigers, panthers and lions cannot be trained or exhibited as performing animals. The basic facts of this case were that on 2-3-1991, a notification which was drafted under the provisions of Section 22 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 was issued. This notification was issued in light of curtailing the exhibition and training of bears, monkeys, tigers, panthers and dogs. This notification was therefore challenged by the Indian Circus Federation in the Delhi High Court. Post the issuance of the notification, another rule was passed which excluded dogs from the said notification. The Delhi High Court then took cognizance of the issue and a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court required the Government of India to have a fresh perspective into the notification. After this, a committee was set up by the Government of India which comprised of the Additional Inspector General (Wildlife), Director, Wildlife Institute of India, Member Secretary, Central Zoo Authority, Additional IGF (Retired) and the Director of the Animal Welfare Association. The committee consisting of the aforementioned individuals furnished a detailed report with regards to the impugned notifications and issued under Section 22 of the PCA, 1960, that the training of bears, monkeys, tigers, panthers and lions was deemed to be regarded as prohibited. This notification was then challenged in the Kerala High Court and the Kerala High Court passed a judgement in consonance to the aforementioned notification on 6-6-2000, wherein it upheld the validity of the notification which was passed by the committee consisting of the aforementioned individuals. In this appeal, yet again, the validity of Section 22 was brought into question. The Appellants main contention was that the provisions of Section 22 of the PCA, 1960 were arbitrary and unreasonable. They were of the view that under no circumstances provided under the ambit of Section 22, can the Central Government issue a notification banning the exhibition and training provided to any animal. The Supreme Court was of the view that animals are usually subjected to cruelty and then they are constantly abused and are put behind the four confines of a cell, trapping them and restricting their free movement. The Supreme Court dismissed the argument of the Appellants on the ground that the right to carry out any trade or business under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India was not violated in any way. The Supreme Court held that non-living human beings too have the right to free movement and this cannot be curtailed in order to fulfill the fundamental rights of the appellants. This was done as the animals were injured and tortured in the course of the training and exhibitions which were conducted by the Circus Authorities and were kept in a very dastardly manner. The Court upheld the Notification and the judgement of the Kerala High Court, as no animal should suffer and go through any sorts of pain and agony. The Court was of the view that the pain and suffering caused to the above mentioned animals would not be allowed under any circumstances.

12.  Shri Ajay Madhusudan Marathe v. New Sarvodaya CHS Ltd., First Appeal No. 676 of 2009.

In this case, the Consumer Court decided the case in favor of a resident who had lodged a complaint in the Consumer Dispute Redress Forum, that the Co-operative Housing in which he resided, made and passed a resolution which prohibited the entry of dogs into the lift of the building. The Society passed this resolution on the grounds that the dog was not deemed to be regarded as a consumer and a dog’s usage of the services of the building could lead to a massive spread of diseases and infections. The lift, being a closed compartment would store bacteria and germs which may be carried by the dog in his fur and this could spread like wildfire in the entire building and the lifts, thereby affecting the lives of the residents. These were the grounds which were put forth by the society for passing the said resolution, thereby disallowing pet dogs from entering the lift. The Court after hearing both the sides and after due deliberation, held that, the owner of the dog is a member who has a house in the impugned co-operative housing society and thereby falls under the ambit of the definition of “consumer” as provided under the provisions of Section 2(7) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The Court was of the view that the owner’s complaint and his grievance which he made to the Consumer Court was well within his rights. The Court held that the dog had a valid Kennel Club of India license and was registered with the Municipal Corporation. The Court also held that the dog was safe and was free from any sorts of diseases as the dog had even got a Health Certificate issued by the Bombay Veterinary College. This ruling laid a precedent that owners of houses in a co-operative society cannot be prevented on any grounds if they have pets and those pets can utilise all the services of the building in the similar manner as that of their owner.

13.  Mustakeem v. State of U.P., 1999 (3) ACR 2668.

In this case, the matter was filed before the Allahabad High Court. In this case, goats and cattle were transported to be slaughtered in a very dastard and barbaric manner. These goats and cattle were tied to each other very tightly, severely violating the provisions of Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.[13] An FIR was lodged against the alleged owner of the cows and the goats for subjecting the animals to cruel and inhuman treatment. The owner requested the release of the cattle under the provisions of Sections 3,5a and 8 of the Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act. It was contended that it was the right of the owner of the cattle to ensure that no cattle were subjected to cruel or inhuman treatment, especially in cases where the ownership of the cattle is also in question. The cattle were under the custody of the U.P. Police Force during the pendency of the matter. The U.P. High Court, after a few deliberations were made, handed over the custody of the cattle back to the owner who had previously subjected the said cattle in question to cruel treatment. This step was taken when the matter was still under deliberation and was ongoing. An appeal was then made in the Supreme Court of India, wherein the Supreme Court passed a judgement declaring that the cattle should to be taken away from the custody of the alleged owner and should be housed in a separate Gaushala, which should be run and protected by the State Government of U.P., who as a matter of fact, previously too, held the custody of the said cattle. With regards to this judgement, it is imperative to understand that the Court held firm on its ground and held that once an animal is taken away from an individual’s personal care and protection because it is subjected to cruelty when the animal is in his/her possession, then in such a case, the animal under no circumstances whatsoever shall be returned back to the same person who previously caused the animal extreme pain and agony.

14.  Varaaki v. Union of India and others, Writ Petition (C) No. 689 of 2015, decided on 28th September, 2016.

In this case, a two judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising of the then Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Amitava Roy of the Supreme Court of India, on 28th September, 2016 passed a judgement refusing to get into the intricate matters dealing with religion. This case dealt with a religious practice of sacrificing animals with a motive to appease the gods and the goddesses. The Court was of the view that sacrificing animals under the garb of a religious practice is not justified by the law on any grounds as it is a clear case of subjecting the animals to cruelty under the various provisions of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed by a Chennai-based journalist, Varaaki. The Supreme Court straightaway declined the PIL filed by the journalist. The Supreme Court was of the opinion that it was not in the position to pass an order preventing the killing and sacrificing of animals as a religious practice, when it has as a matter of fact, been sanctioned by the law. The Petitioner contended that when the animals are subjected to being slaughtered at various slaughter houses, it is usually governed by various rules and regulations and these animals which are slaughtered, are killed and slaughtered by trained individuals who adhere to the rules and regulations. The Petitioner submitted before the court that during the religious sacrifices, the animals are subjected to utmost pain and agony as they are slaughtered by untrained professionals, thereby subjecting these naïve creatures to even more cruelty. The Petitioner was of the view that such acts are clearly barbaric in nature and need to be curtailed. The Court, however, rejected the PIL filed by the Petitioner. However, Chief Justice Dattu held that, “The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act itself gives that right (of animal sacrifice as a religious practice.)[14] The Court gave a rather strange judgement in this case and held that it is extremely crucial to uphold the faith and the religious ceremonies of each religion as these matters of religion are very sensitive to touch upon and one cannot be blindfolded by the centuries old traditions, which are still being followed today like clockwork. In light of these reasons, the PIL was rejected and the court allowed the petitioner to implead as a party in the matter before the Apex Court wherein the Apex Court was dealing with a matter, thereby challenging the decision of the Himachal High Court, which passed an order banning the sacrifice of animals on the grounds of religion.

15.  Kennel Club of India (KCI) v. Union of India, AIR 2013 (NOC) (Supp) 1439 (Mad.)

In this case, the petitioner sent a notice to the Veterinary Council of India on 11.11.2011, stating that the Animal Welfare Association Board of India, provided them information that puppies of dogs belonging to breeds like Doberman, Cocker Spaniels, Great Danes, Boxers, et cetera, were all subjected to avoidable and unnecessary cosmetic surgeries, putting these puppies through extreme pain and agony. These surgeries were done by the Veterinary Doctors and they performed surgeries such as the docking of the tails of these naïve puppies or perhaps by cropping off their ears. The Veterinary Surgeons were of the view that they performed these surgeries on the puppies on the demands made by their owners and they carried out these surgeries with utmost precision and care, ensuring that these puppies are not subjected to cruelty at the hands of the doctors. The Petitioner, however, was of the view that this method of cropping the ears of the puppies or docking their tails was severely against the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and violated Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. The petitioner submitted that the said procedures caused severe mutilations to these puppies and were deemed to be regarded as punishable offenses. The petitioner relied upon the fact that countries like the UK have already taken a step forward and banned such activities, wherein the tail of the puppies is either docked or the ears of the puppies are cropped. The petitioners demanded that the Veterinary Council of India should take cognizance of the said issue and curtail the practice of the aforesaid issues. However, if they failed to do so and instead continued practicing then a strict action should be taken on those Veterinary Surgeons by the Animal Welfare Board of India. The Honorable High Court of Madras however, ruled in favor of the veterinary surgeons and quashed the notice issued by the Kennel Club of India to stop the practice of cropping the ears of the puppies. The Court was of the view that cropping the ears of the dog or docking their tails, does not subject them to any sorts of cruelty as provided under the provisions of Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. It is the sole discretion of the owners of the puppies to get their pup’s tail docked or to get its ears cropped. The Madras High Court was of the view that the cropping of ears of a pet dog does not amount to mutilation and subjecting the dog to aggravating pain and agony. The Court held that the Veterinary Surgeons registered with the Veterinary Council of India were specifically trained to carry out such operations with ease, thereby ensuring that the puppies didn’t have to undergo any sorts of any pain and ensured that they were under no circumstances subjected to cruelty. The Court also held that neither the Animal Welfare Board of India, not the Veterinary Council of India had powers to prohibit the veterinary surgeons from performing various operations of certain breeds of pet dogs such as the Doberman, Cocker Spaniel, Great Danes and the Boxer.

These above rulings made by various High Courts and a few judgements with regards to Animal Rights passed by the Apex Court of India show that our legal jurisprudence has certainly kept animals at the same threshold as that of humans. The Rights of Humans are extended to animals and they are treated equally, however, this does not mean that the constitutional freedoms which are guaranteed to humans are also in a similar way guaranteed to these non-human living beings. Certain rights like the right to freedom of expression and right to freedom of movement is somewhere curtailed and not given to these naïve creatures who possibly cannot explain their feelings like how humans do. Tons of arguments have been put before when various High Courts pronounced their judgements dealing with the cruelty which these animals are subjected to. It is imperative to understand that the ambit of the judgements or the verdicts, somewhere, do not cover certain specific areas where animal rights need a clear and better picture. The concept of equality is a figment of one’s imagination and it certainly does not exist. In the true real world, the concept of equality could be deemed to be regarded as a façade, because certain rights which are extended to humans are certainly not extended to animals and the laws protecting animals who are subjected to cruelty, have a lot of gaps persisting within them. Granting or equating certain rights which are thoroughly enjoyed by the wildlife, are not granted to domesticated or pet animals leading to the undermining of the wildlife protection causes.

In the recent times as well, India has seen a lot instances wherein big changes were brought about. Individuals in a lot of states are witnessing a change in their food consumption habits. The State of Maharashtra has banned the consumption and sale of beef. The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has also taken up a number of initiatives supporting animal rights and protecting animals who are subjected to cruelty. Despite all of these measures, the laws of the country somewhere need to be more stringent when dealing with individuals who commit offenses on animals, thereby subjecting them to a barbaric treatment and ensuring that they go through a lot of pain and agony. An incident occurred recently, wherein a dog was dastardly bashed by the security guards of a residential complex in Mumbai. The videos of this incident spread like wildlife, catching the attention of the various animal welfare associations and animal activists, however, as of now there has been no strict action taken against those barbaric men. An FIR had been filed and strict action against those individuals was promised, however, this incident hasn’t received enough attention. Similarly, an event occurred recently in the State of Kerala, wherein a pregnant elephant’s death spread outrage across the world. Animal Right Activists and several other individuals have filed a petition in the Supreme Court praying the Court to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct an investigation with regards to the pregnant elephant’s death. This incident occurred in Kerala when a pregnant elephant died as a result of eating a pineapple which contained firecrackers. The petitioners in this case demanded that the Supreme Court shall intervene in the said matter and set up a special investigation team to further investigate and furnish a report containing the actual reasons of the death. The residents of the place where this incident occurred claim that, the firecrackers were placed inside the pineapple in order to kill wild boars which has been sanctioned by the State Government of Kerala, as wild boards usually tend to spoil the farms causing huge losses to the farmers. However, the petitioners are keen that an in-depth investigation be conducted to find out the real cause of death.

These incidents show as to how low humans could stoop down and what they are capable of. It is exactly for this reason it is extremely crucial for the legislature to come out of its lethargy and enforce certain stringent provisions in favor of animal rights which provide them complete protection. India is in a dire need of passing a wholesome piece of legislation which deals with all aspects of animal rights and the depravity that these animals face. There are laws which are enacted and are in place already, however, the provisions of these laws are outdated and need to be updated at the earliest, in order to ensure that animals are no longer subjected to ill-treatment at the hands of creatures who claim to be more sensible and smarter than them. It is time that India realises that humans are not the only inhabitants of this planet.

[1] Article 51(A)(g) of the Constitution of India, The Constitution of India by P.M. Bakshi.

[2] Article 48A of the Constitution of India, The Constitution of India by P.M. Bakshi.

[3] Animal Welfare of India v. A. Nagaraja and Ors., 595 (2014) 7 SCC.

[4] Section 2(16) defines the term, “Hunting”, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

[5] Section 9- Prohibition of Hunting, The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

[6] Article 19- Protection of Certain Rights regarding freedom of speech, etc, The Constitution of India by P.M. Bakshi.

[7] Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India- Right to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business, The Constitution of India by P.M. Bakshi.

[8] Article 25 of the Constitution of India- Freedom of Conscience and free profession of religion.

[9] Article 26 of the Constitution of India-Freedom to Manage Religious affairs.

[10] People for Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Union of India, Writ Petition (PIL) (Lodging) No. 2490 of 2004.

[11] Section 5- Foreign Trade Policy- “The Central Government from time to time, formulate and announce, by notification in Official Gazette, the foreign trade policy and may also in the like manner, amend that policy.”- The Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992.

[12] Section 11(3)(e) of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

[13] Section 11- Treating Animals Cruelly, The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

[14] Chief Justice Dattu, delivering the judgement in the case of Varaaki v. Union of India and Others, Writ Petition (C) No. 689 of 2015, decided on 28th September, 2016.

You Might Also Like

How legal regulations affect your rights as an employee, highlights of new criminal laws of india, auto accidents to medical malpractice: the different types of personal injury cases, enforcement of arbitral awards, hegelian approach to intellectual property.

Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!

Don’t miss out on new posts, Subscribe to newsletter Get our latest posts and announcements in your inbox.

Sign up for daily newsletter, be keep up get the latest breaking news delivered straight to your inbox., leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address

Remember Me