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Animal Law

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Animal law

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Sensitizing Humans To Fish Sentience, Kelly Levenda Jan 2017

Sensitizing Humans To Fish Sentience, Kelly Levenda

Animal Sentience

Although fish can feel pain and suffer, they are not often protected legally. Jonathan Balcombe’s What a Fish Knows provides a timely and important contribution to the literature on animal cognition and sentience. By explaining their personalities and capabilities, Balcombe brings much needed public attention to fish and advances the principle that they need and deserve protection.


Animal Sentience: The Other-Minds Problem, Stevan Harnad Jan 2016

Animal Sentience: The Other-Minds Problem, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior — unless they tell us. This is the “other-minds problem.” Within our own species, thanks to language, this problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or “mind-reading” capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science …


Breaking The Silence: The Veterinarian’S Duty To Report, Martine Lachance Jan 2016

Breaking The Silence: The Veterinarian’S Duty To Report, Martine Lachance

Animal Sentience

Animals, like children and disabled elders, are not only the subjects of abuse, but they are unable to report and protect themselves from it. Veterinarians, like human physicians, are often the ones to become aware of the abuse and the only ones in a position to report it when their human clients are unwilling to do so. This creates a conflict between professional confidentiality to the client and the duty to protect the victim and facilitate prosecution when the law has been broken. I accordingly recommend that veterinarian associations make reporting of abuse mandatory.


International Animal Law, With A Concentration On Latin America, Asia, And Africa, Neil Trent, Stephanie Edwards, Jennifer Felt, Kelly O'Meara Jan 2005

International Animal Law, With A Concentration On Latin America, Asia, And Africa, Neil Trent, Stephanie Edwards, Jennifer Felt, Kelly O'Meara

State of the Animals 2005

The status of domestic animal protection laws in Asia, Africa, and Latin America varies, as one might imagine, from country to country. Countries with high per capita incomes are more likely to have a large number of animal protection organizations, whose existence normally leads to the passage of protective legislation.1 The sociopolitical, cultural, and religious backgrounds of each country, as well as previous colonization, also influence whether it has animal protection legislation and whether these laws are enforced. Previous colonization is the case in many former British colonies, which often have very good laws but neither the means nor the …


Progress In Animal Legislation: Measurement And Assessment, Andrew N. Rowan, Beth Rosen Jan 2005

Progress In Animal Legislation: Measurement And Assessment, Andrew N. Rowan, Beth Rosen

State of the Animals 2005

As the animal movement has gained more political authority and public acceptance, it needs better ways to assess and follow its progress—or lack thereof—towards its goals. In this era, in which nonprofits and funding agencies are demanding better measures of effectiveness, the animal movement needs to examine how it looks at the progress it is (or is not) making in gaining better legal protection for animals.


Some Preliminary Thoughts On Permitting Animals To Sue In Contract And Tort, Henry Cohen Jan 1983

Some Preliminary Thoughts On Permitting Animals To Sue In Contract And Tort, Henry Cohen

Laws and Legislation Collection

Animal protection statutes are of course extremely valuable, and they might be made even more so if they were formulated to give private rights of action to their beneficiaries--the animals themselves. But what I would like to explore here is the idea of extending common law rights of action to animals. Admittedly, permitting animals to sue in contract and tort now seems fanciful, but my hope is that this article will provide an initial step toward bringing it about.