A journal to promote animal law as a legal subject and human understanding of nonhumans' legal status.
The human species is often painted as a perennially productive one. Human animals, through millennia of evolving skills, aptitudes, and awareness, have rendered ourselves, according to our hierarchically pattern-seeking minds, at the top of an ostensibly ‘natural’ tree of life. So the tale, in the unique vernaculars of countless disciplines, is often told. We now live in an age where that tale is starting to be seriously and massively questioned and unraveled. Lenses of care, collaboration, and cooperation are blossoming. This article serves as a small part of that movement: to question and reappraise the once ‘perennial’ dominance of ‘man’ and seek a better comprehension of that narrative. It does this by honing in on one of the most dominant assumptions that have pervaded ‘man’s’ relationship with ‘animal’: that non-human animals have been ‘used productively for human gain’ (in other words, ‘exploited’) for so long that there must be something ‘natural’ about this use. This article serves, then, as less of a challenge to the expansive timeline of human animals’ use of non-human animals, and more of an ‘awareness-expanding tool’ of where and how this use arose in some of the earliest examinable periods of our species’ history. By digging deeper into both the zooarchaeological and related written source materials that reveal elements of this ‘use relationship’ during distinct ‘snapshots’ of the ancient world, we may bolster the seriousness of critiquing the ‘naturalness’ of this relationship. Only from such ‘points of unrevelation’ can the consequential harms of this dominant narrative be truly appreciated, and subsequently unwound for the sake of the non-human animals that are continually and massively exploited in our modern world.
Ancient use and conceptualizations of non-human animals
Copyright (c) 2024 The Global Journal of Animal Law
Recognition of Insects as Animals in EU Law: A Legal and Ethical Analysis
The legal recognition of animals in European Union (EU) legislation remains inconsistent, particularly regarding invertebrates. While vertebrates enjoy robust protections under EU law, insects and other invertebrates are systematically excluded from legal definitions of “animals”. This note focuses on Directive 2010/63/EU—the key EU legal instrument regulating the use of animals in scientific procedures—and highlights its exclusion of insects despite growing scientific evidence of insect sentience. Using a comparative analysis of national legal frameworks, ethical reasoning, and scientific findings, the note argues that the exclusion of insects from legal protection is both scientifically outdated and ethically inconsistent. Policy recommendations are provided to harmonize EU animal law and align it with contemporary ethical and biological understanding.
Copyright (c) 2025 The Global Journal of Animal Law
Copyright (c) 2024 The Global Journal of Animal Law https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Some legal reflections on the fate of JJ4, the Italian brown bear that killed a jogger, and the EU Habitats Directive: Donaldson and Kymlicka’s wild animal sovereignty theory put to the test?
This article uses the tragic death of Andrea Papi, the first person in the modern history of Italy to be killed by a brown bear, as a case-study to analyse to what extent EU nature protection law is aligned with the wild animal sovereignty theory of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. Based on the recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding human-carnivore coexistence, this article argues that large carnivores, such as brown bears, appear to be increasingly treated by the Habitats Directive as ‘sovereign’ wild animals, with certain inviolable rights. Whereas recent case-law of the CJEU acknowledges that wild animals are to be treated as sentient beings, the Court also increasingly underscored the importance of the restoration of the brown bear’s main habitats on the European continent. In doing so, the recent decisions of the Court seem to move away from the so-called stewardship-model by urging Member States to guarantee the long-term flourishing of sovereign communities of brown bears.
Animals as Rights-Holders: Could the Charter Abolish Farmed Animal Use?
Numerous efforts have been made to advocate for animals as beings that warrant legal rights, yet animal rights are minimally reflected in Canadian law. Although there have been incremental legislative changes that provide protection to some animals in specific circumstances, they have generally failed to advance the rights of farmed animals undergoing confinement and slaughter. However, if animals’ rights are to be legally recognized under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, significant reform would be required in all modern forms of animal use, including agriculture. This article discusses the prospect of animals receiving rights under sections 7, 12 and 15 of the Charter, which codify the right to life, the right not to be subjected to cruel punishment, and the right to equal treatment, and examines the scope of protections that farmed animals could obtain with these rights. First, I discuss the current state of animal protections in Canada. Building on favourable precedents, I examine jurisprudence that supports sections 7, 12 and 15 rights for animals and conduct a doctrinal analysis under the assumption that these rights have been recognized. My findings demonstrate why modern animal agricultural practices, such as forcible confinement and slaughter, would be unconstitutional by infringing on animals’ proposed Charter rights. As a result, the Charter may have the potential to abolish most forms of farmed animal use.
This paper critically examines the legal protections afforded to badgers (Meles meles) in England, Wales, and France, exposing the stark inconsistencies and systemic shortcomings that undermine their welfare and conservation. Despite their ecological significance and legal status as protected species, badgers remain targets of unjustified persecution rooted in persistent misconceptions—particularly regarding disease transmission and agricultural damage. In the UK, a fragmented legal framework offers limited protection: badgers are safeguarded from intentional harm but not negligence, and penalties are weaker than those for domestic animals under the Animal Welfare Act. Enforcement remains inconsistent, especially in England and Wales, while Scotland’s stronger laws show reform is possible. In France, underground hunting—widely condemned for its cruelty—remains legal, breaching both national and international standards, including the Bern Convention. Local authorities often extend hunting seasons without public input or scientific basis, worsening these violations. This paper calls for targeted reforms centred on the protection of badgers, emblematic of broader shortcomings in wildlife law. In the UK, it urges the consolidation of wildlife offences and the alignment of penalties with those under general animal welfare legislation. In France, it advocates for a definitive ban on underground hunting and compliance with international legal obligations. By exposing the legal and ethical inconsistencies that leave badgers inadequately protected, the article makes the case for a more coherent, rights-based, and democratically accountable framework for safeguarding badgers and wildlife more broadly.
Copyright (c) 2025 Meganne Natali & Rob Espin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Socio-legal perspectives on consensus building in Finnish large carnivore policies
Recently, civil society organisations’ litigation has seemed to put a stop to the hunting of large carnivores in Finland, which has been a regular practice. In light of an updated interpretation of the European Union Habitats Directive provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court, the Finnish Wildlife Agency, which issues the permits for large carnivore hunting, has had to re-evaluate its reasoning for permitting large carnivore hunting. At the same time, critical voices opposing large carnivore hunting have increased both in academia and the general public. While conservationist arguments received support from the courts, the balance of power between stakeholders is shifting, potentially resulting in more inclusive policy making. However, consensus building has become even more difficult since the group of powerful stakeholders involved is widening. In this article we look at conflict management efforts regarding wolf policies, one of the most intensive and persistent environmental conflicts in Finland, in light of consensus building theories. The article is based on observations regarding the processes of management planning, stakeholder relations and media discussions, analysed through hermeneutic interpretation. We ask what changes large carnivore management has recently undergone, what repercussions such changes have, and what future challenges are emerging for conflict management. In addition to the formal wolf management planning, we focus on what is happening on the outskirts of the state-led stakeholder processes to reveal the criticism large carnivore policies are generating.
Estrellita and the possibility of nature-based animal rights
In its judgement of 23 January 2022, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador concluded that individual animals are subjects of rights under the constitutional provision that recognises the rights of nature. Building upon a number of earlier cases in which rivers and mangroves had been recognised as rights-holders, it set out a framework for how animal rights should be understood in the Ecuadorian context. Through its conceptualization of the rights of animals as a dimension of nature’s rights, it bridged the tensions between the more systemic approach to environmental protection on the one hand, and the more individualist approach of animal law on the other hand. This article will discuss the Estrellita judgement, taking it as a starting point to investigate the possibility of ‘nature-based animal rights’ as an alternative to the common understanding of animal rights as being grounded in the properties of individual beings. This investigation will then lead to a proposal for systemically integrating animal rights within the broader normative framework of rights of nature, reconciling the tensions between the ecosystem and the individual.
Protecting wolves in anthropocentric landscapes: some reflections on the entanglement of wolves, humans, and laws
As an important factor in the return of the wolves across the continent, the legal protection of wolves in Europe has often been heralded as a success. The reappearance of wolves in landscapes from which they have been extinct for a long time has however resulted in new challenges for this legal protection. As the populations have increased, so have the conflicts with, as well as between, humans. By picturing the legal protection of wolves as co-produced by wolves, humans, laws, and other bodies in the landscape, this article shows how aversions towards wolves merge with larger political discourses that creep up on the wolves in the laws as well as in the forests. As discussed in this article, it is not always certain that stricter laws lead to stronger protection of the wolves. Having situated the laws within the landscapes where they are supposed to function, the paper concludes by discussing some challenges this poses for animal law and visions of a post-anthropocentric legal system in general. The article focuses specifically on the wolf conflicts in Sweden and its neighboring countries. The analysis of these local conflicts might serve as an example of the complexities inherent in these kinds of conflicts concerning large carnivores in general.
This paper describes the extent of the problem of domestic rabbit abandonment in Canada, examines the source and resolution of the problem from a socio-legal perspective, and makes recommendations as to how this problem might be effectively addressed. It argues that the problem is perpetuated by the combination of inadequate legislation and public misconceptions about the needs of domestic rabbits as pets. Through an examination of the wide range of Canadian laws relevant to the problem, this paper demonstrates that these laws do not adequately address the issue of rabbit abandonment because they treat animals as property rather than as sentient beings and are often inconsistent, unclear and difficult to enforce. Further, by examining popular societal perceptions and misconceptions about domestic rabbits, this paper explains how pet rabbit abandonment is perpetuated by societal norms which fail to identify it as an animal cruelty issue. Combined with the inadequacies of legislative protections for domestic rabbits, Canadian popular culture views domestic rabbits alternately as rodents or as temporary pets who are able to fend for themselves when released into the wild. The paper concludes with recommendations for decreasing the rate of domestic rabbit abandonment, or eliminating it altogether. These suggestions reflect the idea that clear, consistent and enforceable legal prohibitions, coupled with efforts to educate the public about domestic rabbits, are the most effective way of deterring people from abandoning their rabbits.
Animals play a formidable role in human affairs across a wide range of areas including, but not limited to, religion, food, governance, commercial activity and culture. Law being a tool to create order, it becomes necessary that the law regulates the many facets of humananimal interaction. The prominence of this role explains various attempts at regulating these activities both at the domestic and the international level. Zooming in on the international plane, there have been many attempts at regulating animal activity both for economic purposes, disease control and in a limited sense, welfare. As global animal law continues to advance at a faster rate, it is pertinent to smoothen out edges and analyze the possibilities in international law for progressive development. The situation is further worsened by the discrepancies that already exist between the global south and the global north. These discrepancies are not exclusive to animal protection but also arise in other sociolegal headways. This paper seeks to analyze the challenges of global animal law. The analysis shows that existing structures, like that of the African Union through its agencies, offer pathways of surmounting these challenges by bringing many states under the same normative force concurrently and seamlessly. To make progress on the advancement of animal law internationally, a harmonious approach is needed, and that approach cannot be achieved until the international community retreats and considers diverse perspectives and cultural patterns that might stand in the way of a clear understanding of what is at stake, and what is to be achieved.
The ever-increasing global animal death rate in disasters is a product of our anthropocentric bias. The disasters, unfortunately, do not discriminate and devastate both human and animal life, further exacerbating climate change. Institutions such as factory farming are major drivers of such disasters and as a result, we need an immediate inclusion of an animal disaster protection framework in International and national disaster laws as a mechanism to prevent disasters and ensure human and animal safety
Uncovering the Legal Vulnerability of Hunting Dogs in France and Spain
Hunting has deep historical roots as a means of subsistence and recreation, evolving over time to encompass various social, cultural, and economic dimensions. A crucial aspect of hunting is the use of dogs, which have been bred and trained for millennia to aid hunters in tracking and capturing prey. This paper delves into the legal safeguards extended to hunting dogs in France and Spain, focusing on their unique role in the hunting tradition. Both France and Spain recognize the sentience of domestic animals, including hunting dogs, which grants them some level of legal protection. Nevertheless, the absence of dedicated provisions for hunting dogs leaves them vulnerable. The legal landscape concerning domestic animals is extensive and fragmented in both countries, with laws spreading across multiple texts. Spain’s recent move towards a national animal protection law presented an opportunity for reform. However, a controversial amendment that excludes hunting dogs raises questions about equality before the law, potentially granting preferential treatment to hunters. This argument claims enhanced legal protections for hunting dogs in France and Spain. The contention underscores the role that the European Union (EU) can play in ensuring compliance from Member States with European values and, in particular, with Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). As the EU has been at the forefront of animal welfare improvements, it holds the potential to influence change in Member States, ultimately fostering greater compassion and fairness in the treatment of hunting dogs.
A Comparative Analysis of Farmed Animal Protection Laws in the European Union and the United States
Industrial animal agriculture is the predominant form of meat, dairy, and egg production in the US, Europe, and many other parts of the world. This food production system, which the US Environmental Protection Agency calls concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, forces 80 billion farmed animals per year to live crowded together and in intensive confinement during the 99% of their lives in which they are being raised. If left unregulated, the agriculture industry treats these animals as if they are automatons whose basic needs and interests can be ignored. Starting in 1974, the European Union (EU) has passed five directives that set specific and measurable husbandry and housing requirements for farmed animals. The EU directives, while not perfect, offer the highest standards in the world for rearing farmed animals. The US, on the other hand, has no federal law that would establish minimum standards for how farmed animals are housed and treated, leaving such decisions to the industry that owns and raises those animals, and forcing American animal advocates to search for other legal avenues to increase protections for farmed animals. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the US and EU legal standards for raising farmed animals.
This contribution argues in favour of the synergy between two fields: animal law and comparative law. Comparative law will allow for the development and improvement of animal law. Animal law, for its part, can move comparative law beyond the narrow confines of its traditional research agenda. The paper highlights a select number of key issues that are particularly relevant for undertaking serious comparative legal research with respect to animals
Radiant Ecologies: The Biopolitics of Animal Photography in Exclusion Zones
This article wishes to examine photographic representations of animal life in the postdisasterlandscapes of Chernobyl and Fukushima. It seeks to articulate how documentary andinvestigative modes employed by a visual repertoire developed in relation to these disaster zones,intersect with a biopolitical imaginary, which, by creating an ontological collapse and interchangeabilitybetween radioactive spaces and nonhuman materialities – including the matter of animal lives– enactsan exclusionary paradigm that is rooted in speciesist violence. A common trope used to frame animalsin these sites of nuclear disaster is that of resilience and rewilding. This framing has been deployed inrecent times by scientific analyses (James Smith, Nick Beresford et. al., 2019, 2005; Lyons et. al., 2020)as well as popular discourses to depict animals, particularly wildlife, as prolific and invasive, governedby an inhuman excess that allows them to thrive in environments otherwise hostile to humans. Thisnarrative of an alien affinity towards forms of toxicity, while positioning animals on a common spectrumof danger and alterity in which they share attributes of anarchic and uncontained growth, dispersal, andmutation with nuclear waste and the action of radioactivity, simultaneously obscures other narrativesof precarity and harm accruing to nonhuman lives and habitats through their proximity to nuclearpollution, and pollution's ties with anthropogenic, military-industrial regimes. (Sohtome et. al., 2014;Itoh 2018). Drawing on recent work by Elaine Gan, Anna Tsing, and Kate Brown, my paper explores thefiguration of animals in disaster zone imagery in relation to questions of ruination, haunting, decay, andwaste as constituting what Tsing calls "disturbance regimes." (2015) The nexus of toxic exposures andecocidal effects of nuclearization of environments not only impinges on existing ecological relations,altering and corroding these, but also enforces new and saturated chemical ecologies. Through a closereading of the works of Julia Oldham, Yasusuke Ota, and Pierpaolo Mittica, my article engages with theimplicit dialogue between such radioactive ecologies in post-disaster sites in the wake of evacuation andabandonment, and the ways in which visual media, particularly photography, participate in theseecological (dis)arrangements by encoding animal life and its survival in the post-human aftermath ofhuman departure, within various symbolic and semantic codes, codes whose stability is furtherchallenged and complicated by what Daniel Burkner (2015) identifies as the material politics ofphotographing radioactive spaces.
Climate Change and Wild Animals: Key Ethical Perspectives
Climate change is already having significant impacts on wild animal species and individuals.While not all these impacts are negative, many individual animals will suffer declines in their welfareand some will die, and many species will move towards extinction, as the climate changes. From anumber of ethical perspectives, these negative impacts of climate change matter. This paper will outlinethree such perspectives: those that emphasize the value of species, those that are primarily concernedwith individual animals’ welfare, and those that focus on climate injustice. Each of these perspectivesappears to require an ethically-informed policy response to negative climate impacts on wild animals.However, I’ll suggest, such different ethical perspectives don’t always agree on what the best practicalresponse actually is. This may make it more difficult to construct ethical policy and legal frameworks torespond to climate change in the context of wild animals.
A Proposal: Protecting Military Working Dogs from Lasting Effects of War-Induced Trauma and Internalized Stress
This article proposes that certain deleterious physical conditions Military Working Dogsdevelop while serving militaries are a result of the relationship between the stressful nature of theirwork, and their bodies’ response to that stress, through their experienced trauma, internalized stress(high cortisol levels), and anxiety. Subsequently, this article proposes methods to ameliorate thosedeleterious physical conditions by improving Military Working Dogs’ welfare during their militaryservice.
The Bio-Zoopolitics of U.S. Military Working Dog Policy in the U.S. “War on Terror”
This paper analyzes the differential positioning of military working dogs in U.S. militarypolicy with particular attention to the period from 2000-2023, during which, among other shifts, thesedogs were reclassified within U.S. law and military code from “expendable equipment” to “militaryanimals.” This time also aligns with the time of the U.S. “war on terror.”1 The paper draws on feministand postcolonial animal studies to consider the larger cultural contexts under which these shiftsemerged, particularly within the biopolitical and racialized contexts of this war. Considering the culturalcontexts of these legislative shifts helps illuminate the biopolitical and zoopolitical entanglements ofanimality, nationalism, and war in determining how military working dogs gain a certain limited “rightto life” through U.S. military policy within the racialized sacrificial economies of this war.
The Inescapable Harms of Animal Agriculture: How Might Sanctuaries Respond to Threats from Climate Disasters and Diseases
Farmed animal sanctuaries are upheld as refuges, spaces demarcated materially anddiscursively, where formerly farmed animals have the right to grow old, participate in multispeciescommunities and collaborate in larger political projects that imagine the freedom for all and resistanceagainst animal exploitation. Sanctuaries disengage and agitate against food production narratives ofhow these animals ought to live both spatially and relationally. However, the reach of the animalagriculture industry is creeping into sanctuary spaces through ever-increasing risks such as diseases(e.g., avian influenza), the climate crisis (e.g., fires and floods), and other disaster events, revealinginescapable harms that must be addressed. This article considers the shared, albeit unevenly experienced vulnerability to disasters for farmedanimals, as well as what the inescapable harms imposed by animal agriculture mean for sanctuaries.We first identify human sovereignty as the source of intensifying crises and disasters that sanctuariesare forced to confront, as well as the overarching context that sanctuaries are operating within.Following that, we engage with biological and climate disasters as two main case studies, examininghow sanctuaries have responded to them, and what alternative actions sanctuaries could take. Finally,we consider how sanctuaries might take up the labor and responsibility of participating in broaderstruggles for institutional change beyond the sanctuary-gate, educating people about the relationshipsbetween the climate crisis, disease risk, and all scales of farmed animal production and the subsequentchallenges they pose to sanctuaries. Through a multispecies justice framework, we suggest that disasterevents represent key opportunities for sanctuaries to engage with the political project of ending animalproduction at all scales to ensure a safer future for humans and more-than-humans alike.
Sociozoologic Chronicles: Pantanal Creatures’ Narrative Shift from ‘Demons’ to Adored ‘Pets’ Through Media’s Lens
Considering the media influence, this work studied the representation of animals in the media in the episode of fires in the Brazilian Pantanal biome in 2020. The study analyzed the content of 175 news articles published on the portals UOL and G1 to identify the social roles attributed to the species portrayed and to promote a reflection based on the theory of the Sociozoologic Scale and Critical Animal Studies. Our findings showed a representation of animals that reinforces their subordinate position in relation to humans, assuming the role of victims of the anthropic action. The press depicts nonhuman animals differently, depending on the social position in which they are established. However, there was also evidence of networks of relationships between human and nonhuman animals based on concepts of animal protection, highlighting relationship configurations that aim to preserve species.
Speciesism in Climate Change-Related Disasters: Billions of Animals are Excluded from the Continuum of Disaster Management
The warming climate and increasing rate and strength of disasters resulting from shifting weather patterns affect both humans and animals. As disaster management agencies globally are forced to become more effective at preparing and responding to climate-related disasters, the most populous farmed species are being left out of these plans. As the number of animals at risk of disaster events increases, it is mostly companion animal species that have been given more consideration for evacuation and sheltering. Species such as chickens, the most populous avian species on the planet, along with the rest of the eighty billion other farmed land animals that are killed every year for human consumption, have little to no protection in both intensive and extensive farming systems, whether in high or low-income countries. The speciesism prevalent in society is mirrored in disaster management to the detriment of public health, the environment, and animal rights.
Procedure Severity Assessments in Animal Research: Ethical and Practical Considerations
Procedure severity assessments are required for certain types of animal research. While the concept exists in many jurisdictions, each takes a different approach, resulting in the same procedure potentially being categorized differently, and being subject to different requirements (or none at all). The severity assessment frameworks in the EU, Israel, Canada, and Switzerland are considered and applied to a hypothetical blood withdrawal from a Giant Pacific Octopus. The note considers whether we can ever be sure that we understand the experience of pain of another species, in particular a species that is evolutionarily distant from and poorly understood by humans, and whether our ethical obligations could ever be met in the context of severity assessments.
Copyright (c) 2023 The Global Journal of Animal Law
Ensuring Livestock Welfare at Slaughter in the US: Still A Long Way To Go
US legislation aimed at protecting livestock welfare at pre-slaughter handling and during slaughter falls far short of being an effective, comprehensive, and modern law. While its implementation several decades ago has resulted in modest improvements and some of the most egregious practices have been outlawed, the legislation's impact remains limited. In addition to its limited scope and scant enforcement, the legislation has not kept up with scientific developments. Further, the legislation raises ethical concerns by failing to appropriately consider the interests of animals in situations in which slaughter without stunning remains allowed. The legislation remains deeply deficient on a number of fronts; much more is needed to ensure livestock welfare at slaughter.
Sheep Fatigue During Transport: Analysis of EU Regulatory Framework, Scientific Knowledge, and Stakeholder Perceptions
Maneesha Deckha, Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders (2021, University of Toronto Press)
The Theological and Ethical Grounds against Keeping Elephants Captive
As set forth below, animal theology experts Dr. Andrew Linzey and Dr. Clair Linzey of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics believe that Petitioner Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. (“NhRP”) has made a prima facie case that the elephants confined at Fresno Chaffee Zoo in Fresno, CA—Nolwazi, Amahle, and Mabu—are entitled to habeas corpus relief. Accordingly, we respectfully urge the Supreme Court of California to issue an order to show cause in this matter.