LAW6175 Animal Rights: Philosophy and comparative practise

This is a course with a combination of legal doctrine, legal theory, and comparative law. We will also be looking at examples of what animals are capable of in order to engage in a discussion of some of the main themes of the course.

Although entitled Animal Rights some of the course will deal with animal welfare, partly because many people regard improved animal welfare as a realistic alternative to rights or as a necessary step towards animal rights–and partly because the legal roots of animal rights lie in the same attitudes and evidence as animal welfare–both are the outcome of a recognition of animals as sentient beings.

In order to provide a grounding for what follows, we start with a short exploration into the nature of animals (sometimes called "non-human animals") as sentient creatures - the nature and meaning of animal sentience is fundamental to considering rights (in much the same way as the global, environmental, ideological, and social importance of rivers and mountains are fundamental to considering them for rights).

After this we look at the existing regime for animals, ie anti-cruelty and animal welfare laws, focussing mostly on the systems in the UK and EU but also in some other countries. That leads to a consideration the theoretical basis for considering granting rights to animals, and to issues of personhood and property.

Finally, we explore animal rights laws, what is happening at the moment in law courts around the world, what approaches are being made to establish rights for animals, and what animal rights might look like - addressing fundamental questions such as which animals will have rights, and what will those rights look like.

This course is very closely modelled on a very similar course offered in Cambridge and put together by Dr Fasel and Dr Sean Butler of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law. This is an academic centre of competence dedicated to the study and promotion of fundamental rights for non-human animals globally - so please look out for the activities of the Centre this year, including seminars in the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series.