Saskia Stucki

Animals are the traditional blind spot in human rights theory. This book brings together the seemingly disparate discourses of human and animal rights, and looks at emerging animal rights as new human rights. It approaches the question whether animals can and should have human rights through a comprehensive review of contemporary human rights philosophy, discussing both naturalistic and political justifications of human and animal rights. On philosophical as well as practical grounds, this book argues that there are compelling conceptual, principled, and prudential reasons for modernizing the human rights paradigm and integrating animals into its protective mandate. 

Moreover, this book proposes the novel One Rights approach as a new (post-)human rights paradigm for the Anthropocene. One Rights advances a holistic understanding of the indivisibility and interdependence of human and animal rights. This book explores how the systematic subjugation, exploitation, and extermination of animals simultaneously contributes to some of the gravest social and environmental threats to human rights, such as animalistic dehumanization and climate change. This book submits that, in light of their socio-political and ecological interconnectedness, human and animal rights are best protected in concert. 

The themes of this book are part of a larger conversation about postanthropocentric legal paradigms emerging in the Anthropocene. For human rights to survive in this era of anthropogenic crises, we need to abandon the toxic ideology of human exceptionalism and embrace a more inclusive version of (post-)human rights that tends to the nonhuman. This book intends to show that a holistic One Rights approach promises to achieve better rights-protective outcomes for humans, animals, and their shared planetary home.

This book concerns itself with the contemporary question of animal rights – an issue hitherto understudied by legal scholars. Against the backdrop of the merits and shortcomings of current animal welfare law, it provides an in-depth exploration of the idea of animal rights from a legal theoretical perspective.

On the basis of a critical appraisal of the existing legislative regime governing animal welfare, the author proposes a paradigm change towards a rights-based framework for legal animal protection. The study examines such a reconception of animals’ legal status as legal subjects and holders of (fundamental) rights by means of analysis of the relevant legal concepts – legal personhood, rights, and human rights – with regard to their applicability to animals.

This study is marked by its distinctly legal theoretical approach to the subject of animal rights, and addresses scholars of all disciplines with an interest in animal welfare as well as in the foundations of law.

Das Buch beruht auf einem Rechtsgutachten zur EU-Tierversuchsrichtlinie und deren Umsetzung in deutsches Recht. Es analysiert ausgewählte zentrale Aspekte der RL 2010/63/EU und des staatlichen Umsetzungsrechts, wie etwa das Verbot von Versuchen an Menschenaffen und die Beschränkung von Versuchen an Primaten. Für jeden Themenkomplex werden die Vorgaben der Richtlinie dargestellt, der Umsetzungsentwurf auf seine Richtlinien- und Grundgesetzkonformität überprüft sowie Änderungsvorschläge für eine tierfreundliche, verfassungs- und richtlinienkonforme Umsetzung vorgelegt.

Das Werk richtet sich an das an Tierschutz- und Tierversuchsrechtsfragen interessierte Publikum. Trotz der mittlerweile rechtskräftigen Umsetzungsgesetzgebung bleibt die Problematik aktuell. Die darin beleuchteten Grundsatzfragen sind nach wie vor gesetzgeberisch nicht befriedigend gelöst und für das europäische und deutsche Tierversuchsrecht von allgemeiner Bedeutung.

This Article puts forward a novel analogy between animal welfare law and international humanitarian law—two seemingly unrelated bodies of law that are both marked by the aporia of humanizing the inhumane. Through the comparative lens of the international laws of war and peace, this Article argues that existing animal welfare law is best understood as a kind of warfare law that regulates violent activities within an ongoing “war on animals.” It further submits that this animal warfare law needs to be complemented and counterbalanced by an animal law of peace, consisting of a jus animalis contra bellum and peacetime animal rights.

The world is facing climate emergency, one of a series of overlapping and mutually reinforcing environmental crises. In 2017, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries signed the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, urging the world to take immediate action against the current trajectory of catastrophic climate change. We, as concerned lawyers, have heard the world scientists' call, and believe it is time for the legal community at large to organize and join the global fight against climate change.

This article puts forward a novel analogy between animal welfare law and international humanitarian law – two seemingly unrelated bodies of law that are both marked by the aporia of humanizing the inhumane. Based on a comparative analysis with the law of war, this article argues that animal welfare law is best understood as a kind of warfare law which regulates violent activities within an ongoing “war on animals,” and needs to be complemented by a jus contra bellum and peacetime animal rights.

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.

The chapter draws a comparison with the self-certifying of production methods as 'humane' or animal-friendly in the labelling of animal products-that is, according to companies' own self-imposed codes of conduct. It likens the idea of humanizing animal slaughter, factory farms, and other forms of production to the notion of humanizing warfare. Like international humanitarian law (IHL), animal welfare law is marked by the tension inherent in its attempt to humanize innately inhumane practices. Given these parallels, the analysis of animal welfare law might benefit from existing insights into the potential and limits of IHL. Both areas of law endorse a principle of 'humanity' while arguably facilitating and legitimizing the use of violence, and might thereby ultimately perpetuate the suffering of living beings. The implicit justification of violence percolating from the IHL-like animal 'protec-tion' laws could only be outweighed by complementing this body of law with a ius contra bellum for animals.