Animal Rights

Project period: 2024-2027

Made by humans for humans, the law is deeply anchored in anthropocentric patterns of thought. The interests of animals are only fragmentarily reflected in the law, and they are not subject to coherent treatment. Instead of rights, all that is afforded animals are reflexive responses of the law, whereby current animal protection law largely contributes to legitimizing traditional forms of animal exploitation. However, a solidifying body of academic work and changing social views indicate that the legal vocabulary of subject and object no longer adequately reflects the human-animal relationship, also suggesting that a fundamental reorientation of the legal status of animals is imminent. But what form might the future legal position of non-human animals assume in concrete terms? And can the law ever be successful in leaping over its own anthropocentric shadow?

More information

Animals in the Law: Where is discourse on non-human legal subjects heading?

February 03, 2025

For over 50 years, the animal rights movement has been advocating a change in the relationship between humans and animals. In the humanities and social sciences, an “animal turn” has been proclaimed. There is now also growing interest in the question of how animals should be legally treated and whether they are entitled to their own rights. “While constitutional rights for animals have been in the foreground up to now, it is precisely private law that has a long tradition of gradually emancipating new legal subjects and of giving them an individual and autonomous character,” says Felix Aiwanger, research fellow at the Institute. more

Event series

Hamburg Forum on Comparative Animal Law

National and international guests speak on the state, development and future of the legal landscape concerning the human-animal relationship. It is the series’ aim to build bridges – between national and international lines of discourse, between animal rights and animal welfare law, between animal rights and rights of nature, between legal scholarship and the natural sciences and civil society. more

Publications