Literature Review

The burgeoning movement advocating legal personhood for animals is gaining momentum, aiming to elevate animals from mere property to beings with protective rights. Legal personhood, a concept that has evolved over time, has been granted to various entities, including corporations, ships, estates, idols, and institutions. Globally, non-human entities, such as animals, rivers, and forests, have been recognized as legal persons, enabling them to engage in legal actions through human representatives as spokespersons. In this context, some studies emphasize that science-backed judgments and legislation offer a solid foundation and are more practical to formulate and implement. This interdisciplinary approach to legal personhood for animals is crucial for reshaping animal rights in India

Growing scientific evidence shows that vast numbers of nonhuman animals are sentient, and ethicists have argued that this means they have moral value. However, law’s integration of individual animals as subjects with greater protection has been slow, despite the extreme threats that animals face today from human sources like climate change and industrial exploitation. Personhood has been heralded by some as a new legal status to protect animals, but the concept of “legal personhood” has been misunderstood. Most recently, New York’s highest court decided in a case of first impression that an elephant named Happy is not a legal person and does not have a right to liberty—over two impassioned dissents. This Article offers a new synthesis of views regarding the moral status of animals, their “basic rights,” and the relationship between basic rights and legal personhood. I argue that sentient animals have moral status that requires recognition of basic rights based on considerations of justice, which may lead to legal personhood over the long term. First, I argue that at least sentient animals have moral status and are subjects of justice who require greater legal protections. Then, I assess a new “bundle theory” of legal personhood that shows that personhood is a cluster concept composed of multiple “incidents.” I argue that American law should better recognize basic rights to bodily integrity, liberty, and probably life for sentient animals, and should correct a mistaken view that personhood is the simple ability to hold rights. However, basic rights are only one incident of legal personhood, although recognizing them may help lead to animal personhood in time. To inform litigation, I also show how the bundle theory helps to explain the important disagreement between the judges in Happy’s case. Finally, I suggest that both legislatures and judges can work to enhance animal legal rights, and perhaps eventually legal personhood, in the United States.

This book addresses one of today’s most urgent issues: the loss of wildlife and habitat, which together constitute an ecological crisis. Combining studies from different disciplines such as law, political science and criminology, with a focus on animal rights, the chapters explore the successes and failures of the international wildlife conservation and trade treaties, CITES and the BERN Convention. While these conventions have played a crucial role in protecting endangered species from trade and in the rewilding of European large carnivores, the case studies in this book demonstrate huge variations in their implementation and enforcement across Europe. In conclusion, the book advocates for a non-anthropocentric policy approach to strengthen wildlife conservation in Europe.

Studies show that the number of illegal wolf theriocides in Poland is significant and increasing. According to research, between 2002 and 2020 there were 91 cases of killings. On the other hand, between 1922 and 2022 we were able to identify only nine rulings related to the wolf crimes. It should be noticed that this situation is not justified by the official state approach to killing wolves in Poland. These animals have been a strictly protected species ever since 1998 and since then there has been no issuing of state licences for general population reduction. The chapter focuses on the social and legal factors influencing the effectiveness of combating the illegal killing of wolves in Poland. Our main argument is that these factors are, at the same time, the greatest problems for law enforcement authorities to effectively counteract the illegal wolf theriocides, especially when it comes to not only anthropogenic but also financial approaches in criminal law.

Unprecedented demands have recently arrived at the doorstep of courts and parliaments the world over: nonhuman animals should receive some of the rights that have so far been reserved to human beings. This development has raised fundamental questions about the nature of legal rights, and who should have them. More Equal Than Others: Humans and the Rights of Other Animals provides a sustained analysis of the fundamental rights of human and nonhuman animals to explore the issue of whether conferring fundamental legal rights to animals would undermine the equal status and rights of humans.

Non-human rights are becoming part of our ordinary legal landscape and vocabulary. Animals, rivers, mountains, rainforests, ecosystems and synthetic or artificial entities such as machines, AI and robots are currently regarded or in the process of being considered subjects of rights in different parts of the world. This introduction to the volume Non-Human Rights: Critical Perspectives explores and provides a critical outlook on this emerging trend. It also overviews the contributions to the volume, which analyse the limitations and possibilities of non-human rights and their paradoxes and relevance for our critical juncture.

Imagine a perfect food system. What would you find there? Only good food! Such food tastes good; it is, more broadly, aesthetically valuable. But it also plays cultural and symbolic roles, featuring in people's identities, sense of place, and traditions. Such a system also needs to preclude scarcity, cruelty, and injustice. A perfect food system is just. The central thesis of Josh Milburn's new book is that such a system need not be a vegan food system, even though it would be “rights-respecting” (i.e., would prohibit and prevent the violations of rights of both humans and other animals). Milburn's provocative claim, at least to readers familiar with animal ethics, is that non-vegan, animal-rights-respecting food production methods should not only be allowed by the zoopolis – the polity that recognizes the political rights of other animals – but also institutionally supported.

In various cultures and epochs, people have treated animals differently. The Bible contains a prohibition on obtaining meat from living animals. This means that such cruel practices were used. The modern philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that one’s attitude toward animals is indicative of how one relates to humans. As he said, “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals” (Kant, 2005: Duties to Animals and Spirits). The above statement appears to be a universal truth. Therefore, one should not assume that the issue of human-inflicted suffering on animals and ways to mitigate it is something new in the history of civilization. What is new is the question of animal rights. Even for Kant, the idea of animals having rights was inconceivable (Kant, 2012). Why? Because as “non-thinking” beings,...

This paper identifies an overlooked but widespread philosophical view in the animal rights movement, Animal Rights Vanguardism. This is the view that (1) the arc of history, by way of ever-increasing moral awareness, bends towards animal liberation, (2) animal rights activists are aware of the moral truth when it comes to human-animal relations thanks to a moral-epistemic privilege, and (3) the primary moral imperative for animal rights activists is to increase the moral awareness of the masses. The paper then makes four points about Animal Rights Vanguardism: First, it can be found across a wide range of animal rights literature. Second, it is the target of many familiar objections against vegans and animal rights activists. Third, it presents an obstacle to the success of the animal rights movement. Fourth, consciously rejecting it leads to a more compelling philosophy of animal rights activism, termed Critical Animal Rights Collectivism, which is based on the principles that social change is contingent, that everyone has broadly equal access to moral truth, and that activists should focus on collective organization more than on individual persuasion.

To answer the raised question, I will firstly look at the philosophy of sport literature. The only author within the philosophy of sport literature that was considering including animals as a topic or even a field in the ethics of sport was W. J. Morgan (Morgan&Meier, 1995; Morgan, Meier& Schneider, 2001). He considered animals as a special part of the ethics in sport – together with competition, enhancements, gender, and social issues (Škerbić, 2021) The only topic that was pursued in a significant amount was animal hunting (Wade, 1990; Kheel, 1996; Curnutt, 1996; Dickson, 2010; Morris, 2014, 2021;), while in a much lesser amount the ethics of animals in sport (Campbell, 2013; Morris, 2014, 2018; Neuhaus&Parent, 2019) and specifically horses (McLean&McGreevy, 2010; Torres&Lopez Frias, 2019; Evans&McNamee, 2021). Secondly, I will claim that animal issues in sport deserve significant attention, but it should be considered within the area of Bioethics of Sport. Most of all, connections should be made with the bioethics literature on animals and its authorities such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan. Finally, I will propose three possible ways to considerate animals in the philosophy of sport, starting with 1) foundational issues (such as: which kind of usage of animals/non-humans should be considered as a sport, what are 'animals or interspecies sports', how to build 'animal ethics of sport', animal rights and liberationism in sport, anthropocentrism and biocentrism in sports) and then going to more 2) specific and/or recent issues and cases (such as cloning horses or hunting), to end up in 3) making connections to the general literature and concepts of/in sports-philosophy.

The grievances of animal agricültüre are becoming more and more visible. The sitüation in this indüstry is of ünbelievable gravity and demands the lives of billions of animals each day who süffer a miserable and short life before being killed. This is why activism for animals focüses more and more on the agricültüral contexts of animal süffering (Vüole 16–17). There is an abündance of activism strategies which can be üsed to make people go vegan or jüst make someone think twice aboüt the meat on their diet. The animal rights movement is characterized by a prevalent ethical motivation (Münro 169). Nonetheless, this movement is broad and entails several different approaches that do not all include the demand for animal rights (see chapter 2.3). Therefore, the movement will be referred to as animal movement to include rights positions as well as welfare positions. Whether in the streets, in personal discüssions or in academia – activism for animals is heterogeneoüs and the debate aboüt the right approach to end animal süffering is heated. This debate can be redüced to two positions: idealistic and pragmatic (Leenaert; Francione & Garner). Idealistic voices plead for individüal ethical behavior, süch as to spread ethical veganism. However, there are a growing nümber of academic and activist voices advocating for pragmatic means to achieve a vegan world (Freeman; Taft; Leenaert). This inclüdes advocating for meat redüction like Meatless Mondays or incremental welfare reforms. However, these means seem to contradict the principles and ideals of an idealistically led vegan activist. On the one hand, pragmatism coüld ündermine the anti-speciesist mission of the animal movement (Francione). On the other hand, pragmatists criticize idealism for being ineffective and hampering incremental improvements for animals by sticking to fixed principles (Leenaert). So how do activists balance these two approaches? This stüdy’s context is Lünebürg, Germany, and will examine how five activists from this city deal with the tension explained above.

Human rights and animal rights are inextricably linked. Violating the rights of animals has profound implications for the rights of humans, including fundamental rights to food and water and the right to a healthy environment. This chapter examines how the interests of humans and animals are aligned when it comes to threats faced by all life on the planet. Humanity and animals both suffer from the effects of deforestation, environmental destruction, the loss of biodiversity, the emergence of zoonotic diseases, world hunger and freshwater scarcity. Issues of national security and violence in society are also considered. This chapter explores humanity’s deep connection with animals and builds the case for more meaningful legal protection for animals based on our shared destinies.