Animals and the Law

With contributions from professors and lawyers across Canada, Canadian Perspectives on Animals and the Law aims to help enrich the discourse on animals and the law in Canada by situating doctrinal issues and legal developments in the broader context of ethical and philosophical debate about human-animal relationships.

Animals and the Law examines the unique role that animals play as living property in a legal system conceived by and for human beings. On the one hand, animals are things that we buy, eat, and use in experiments. On the other, they are beloved family companions. This book traces the history of laws dealing with animals.

This book critically engages the emerging field of global animal law from the perspective of an intersectional ethical framework. Reconceptualising global animal law, this book argues that global animal law overrepresents views from the west as it does not sufficiently engage views from the Global South, as well as from Indigenous and other marginalised communities. Tracing this imbalance to the early development of animal law's reaction to issues of international trade, the book elicits the anthropocentrism and colonialism that underpin this bias. In response, the book outlines a new, intersectional, second wave of animal ethics. Incorporating marginalised viewpoints, it elevates the field beyond the dominant concern with animal welfare and rights. And, drawing on aspects of decolonial thought, earth jurisprudence, intersectionality theory and posthumanism, it offers a fundamental rethinking of the very basis of global animal law. The book's critical, yet practical, new approach to global animal law will appeal to animal law and environmental law experts, legal theorists, and those working in the areas of animal studies and ecology.

In the ongoing quest to protect animals from exploitation, this book discusses "beingness," as an alternative to "personhood," as the more impactful and animal-centered legal status that recognizes and values animals for who they are.

Contributors to this volume explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Ethical questions on ownership, protection against suffering and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control are thought-provokingly examined.