Teaching
One of the key missions of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law is to give students the tools they require to understand existing animal welfare laws and to reflect critically on fundamental animal rights laws.
Animal Rights Law course
Since 2017, we have been offering a free and extracurricular course on Animal Rights Law. This course is organised in the same manner as a Cambridge half-paper, which means that it is taught in sixteen 1-hour sessions. The course proceeds in three parts, covering, first, the history and the status quo of animal welfare laws, second, the philosophy and legal theory of animal rights, and third, the practical implications of animal rights, including model animal rights laws and animal rights cases.
Our 2018-2019 course syllabus and short reading lists can be found here.
Animal Rights Law half-paper
From October 2021, Animal Rights Law will be part of the undergraduate Cambridge Law degree. This course is only open to Cambridge students.
Animal Rights Law lectures
Animal Rights Law lectures were given to final-year law students at the University of Cambridge in Michaelmas and Lent Terms 2021-22. There were 14 lectures, each lasting just under one hour, and some are made freely available by kind permission of the University of Cambridge.
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, religious, 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 of the legal theory, to understand the philosophical basis for considering granting rights to animals, and issues of personhood vs 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.
Lecture 1: Introduction to animal rights law, and the nature of animal sentience with Sean Butler
Lecture 2: History of the legal status of animals with Sean Butler
Lecture 3: Animal welfare law in the UK and EU with Sean Butler
Lecture 4: Comparative animal welfare law with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 5: The great debate: welfarism v abolitionism with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 6: Animal rights: philosophical foundations with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 7: Animal rights: legal theory, pt I with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 8: Animal rights: legal theory, pt II with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 9: Intersection between animal rights and human rights with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 12: Animal rights cases, pt I (habeas corpus) with Sean Butler
Lecture 13: Animal rights cases, pt II (beyond habeas corpus) with Raffael Fasel
Lecture 14: Model animal rights laws, pt I with Sean Butler
Lecture 15: Model animal rights laws, pt II with Sean Butler
Lecture 16: Implications of animal rights law with Sean Butler
Topics in Animal Rights Law Seminar
The Topics in Animal Rights Law Seminar was a bi-weekly seminar on advanced issues in Animal Rights Law which was offered in Lent Term 2020. Due to the pandemic, it is not currently being offered. The 2020 syllabus can be accessed here.