Research
Cutting-edge research in animal rights law is one of the central pillars of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law.
In addition to publications by members of the Centre, a selection of which is listed below, we support students interested in exploring animal rights-related questions and we invite experts from other institutions to contribute their research to special journal issues and other publications.
The views expressed in these contributions are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law.
Animal Rights Law Textbook by Centre co-founders
We are excited to have launched Animal Rights Law (Hart Publishing 2023) on 23 February 2023, the first textbook that covers the new field of animal rights law and makes it accessible to readers from all around the world. Authored by Raffael Fasel and Sean Butler, this easy-to-use book tells readers everything they need to know about animal rights law.
Using straightforward examples from over 30 legal systems from both the civil and common law traditions, and based on popular courses run by the authors who are co-founders at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights, the book takes the reader from the earliest anti-cruelty laws to modern animal welfare laws, to recent attempts to grant basic rights and personhood to animals. To help readers understand this legal evolution, it explains the ethics, legal theory, and social issues behind animal rights and connected topics such as property, subjecthood, dignity, and human rights.
Animal Rights Law is available for purchase here. To receive your 20% discount use discount code GLR CA3UK in the UK; GLR CA3US in the US; GLR CA3CA in Canada; or GLR CA3AU in Australia and New Zealand.
Two virtual book launches, by the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and NYU’s Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program respectively, can be viewed below.
Selected research by Centre members
‘Exploring the Foundations of Animal Legal Rights: Towards a Sentience-Interest Pragmatic View’ (2023) Revista Catalana de Dret Ambiental, by Carolina Leiva Ilabaca, former Visitor at the Centre. This article examines whether only persons can be holders of legal rights and it develops its own pragmatic proposal.
‘A Strategic Proposal for Legally Protecting Wild Animals’ (2022) Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, by Pablo P Castelló, former Visitor at the Centre—an article exploring a legal strategy to how wild animals’ interest in self-determination could be recognised in the Australian Constitution.
‘Transition rather than Revolution: The Gradual Road towards Animal Legal Personhood through the Legislature’ (2022) Transnational Environmental Law, by Eva Bernet Kempers, former Visitor at the Centre— an article arguing that legal personhood can be achieved gradually and need not be viewed as the precondition for legal rights.
‘Intersectionality—An Alternative to Redrawing the Line in the Pursuit of Animal Rights’ (2021) Ethics and the Environment, by Robyn Trigg, former Visitor at the Centre — an article criticising dualistic thinking in animal rights and proposing an alternative framework based on the concept of intersectionality.
‘The Dawn of European Animal Rights Law’ (2020) Global Journal of Animal Law, by Raffael Fasel and Sean Butler — a note putting the first European Animal Rights Law Conference from September 2019 in the broader context of an emerging European discipline of animal rights law.
'The Old "New" Dignitarianism' (2019) Res Publica, by Raffael Fasel — an article discussing the intellectual history of the idea of animal rights and of its dignitarian countermovement.
‘“Simply in Virtue of Being Human”? A Critical Appraisal of a Human Rights Commonplace’ (2018) Jurisprudence, by Raffael Fasel — an article that critically examines the common notion in human rights law according to which human beings have human rights “simply in virtue of being human”.
'The Swiss Citizens' Initiative for Primate Rights Goes to Court', in Nonhuman Rights Blog, 2 April 2018, by Raffael Fasel et al., — a blog post discussing the Swiss citizens’ initiative which aims to amend the Constitution of the Canton of Basel-Stadt by way of a referendum that would add the fundamental right to nonhuman primates to life and bodily and mental integrity to the Constitution’s existing fundamental rights catalogue.
‘The Leo and Hercules Trial: An Historic Step for Animal Rights or Business as Usual?’, in Giordano Bruno Foundation Switzerland Blog, 26 May 2015, by Raffael Fasel — a blog post discussing the Nonhuman Rights Project’s habeas corpus case for the chimpanzees Leo and Hercules.
Special journal issues edited by Centre members
‘Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy Special Issue’ (2017) in 5 Global Journal of Animal Law 1, by Visa AJ Kurki and Raffael Fasel (eds) — a special issue which the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series has published in collaboration with the Global Journal of Animal Law (GJAL), a peer-reviewed online journal published by Åbo Akademi University (Finland). Here is the table of contents of our special issue, which is also available on the website of GJAL. The full issue can also be downloaded as a PDF file here.
Raffael Fasel, Talking Animals, Law, Philosophy—and Beyond (Introduction)
Peter Fordyce, Suffering in Non-human Animals: Perspectives from Animal Welfare Science and Law
Robert Garner, The Boyd Group and Animal Experimentation: A Case Study of Deliberation
Research by former Centre members and former students
‘The Global Watchdogs: Toward International Animal Rights Law?’ (2021) Journal of Animal Ethics, by Kit de Vriese and Maria Elena Handtrack — a student paper-turned-article that explores different ways to protect animal rights internationally.