Animals in Constitutional Law – Symposium Introduction

Eva Bernet Kempers & Yaffa Epstein

University of Antwerp & Uppsala University

Of all fields of law, constitutional law may be the field that is traditionally most focused on the human individual as the one and only centre of concern. It is therefore particularly surprising that, over the last decades, an increasing number of jurisdictions have added a reference to non-human animals to their Constitution. Even though the references to animals differ in shape and form, what they have in common is that they bring animals under the scope of constitutional protection. As Jessica Eisen has stated, “at least some of the time, these constitutions and the courts construing them are treating animal interests as having intrinsic constitutional value, independent of their value to human persons”. This does seem to represent a step beyond mere welfarism, in which animals are only protected insofar as their protection is consistent with the protection of human interests.

This blog symposium aims to highlight this important trend through assembling a collection of posts that discuss the constitutional embrace of animals from different angles. Authors in this symposium shed light on the ways in which animals have been or can be approached in constitutional law, and what the significance is of this development in their respective jurisdictions. It will become clear that the implications of addressing animals in constitutional law are diverse. In his contribution, Olivier LeBot of the University of Aix-Marseille discusses the history of the constitutionalization of animal protection, and the impact these provisions have, shedding light on a trend that seems to be spreading the world. Other authors take on the status of animals in particular Constitutions. Harsh Vardhan Bhati of Uppsala University and Kavia Ahuja of O.P. Jindal Global University discuss several Indian cases in which animals were held to benefit from certain constitutional protections, as well as cases in which animals were held to have the legal status of living persons. Two other contributions discuss proposals to explicitly extend constitutional protection to animals. As Elien Verniers of Ghent University shows, the current Belgian proposal to include animals in its Constitution may well be correlated with Belgians’ fondness for chocolate and beer. Carolina Cerda Guzman of the University of Bordeaux and Ximena Insunza of the University of Chile discuss the revolutionary but ultimately unsuccessful 2022 proposal to enshrine animal rights in Chile’s Constitution.

Several contributors discuss potential conflicts between constitutional protection of animals and property rights. As Cezary Błaszczyk of the University of Warsaw analyzes, the change of animals’ legal status to something more than mere property in many legal systems means that animals’ status in the  constitutional context should be understood differently.  Ben Davy of TU Dortmund University and the University of Johannesburg presents an original take on the consequences of the changing constitutional status of animals as possibly giving rise to a duty of compensation or reparation to both animal owners and newly liberated animals. This position is nuanced by Joshua Gellers of the University of Florida, who highlights the relative narrow-mindedness of the movement for animal rights hitherto, and presents some suggestions for promising directions for the animal rights movement.

Calls for legal and constitutional rights for animals have been made for hundreds of years, but only in the last decades have these calls resulted in legal changes and constitutional amendments. The contributions in this symposium provide historical context for this development, describe some recent, proposed, and unsuccessful pathways towards the constitutionalization of animal rights, and highlight some potential overarching challenges in enshrining constitutional protection or rights for animals. Together, these posts help clarify the current state of constitutional animal law and illuminate a research agenda for examining this emerging field of law.

Eva Bernet Kempers is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Animal Law at the University of Antwerp, Belgium and Junior Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law.

Yaffa Epstein is an Associate Professor of Environmental Law at the Uppsala University Faculty of Law and Pro Futura Scientia research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. She is co-convenor of the IACL Research Group on Rights of Nature and Animals.

Suggested citation: Eva Bernet Kempers and Yaffa Epstein, ‘Animals in Constitutional Law – Symposium Introduction’ IACL-AIDC Blog (13 February 2024) Animals in Constitutional Law – Symposium Introduction — IACL-IADC Blog (blog-iacl-aidc.org).