Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Anne Peters (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law): Towards Global Animal Law

About the Speaker
Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg (Germany), and a professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, Basel (Switzerland), and a L. Bates Lea Global Law professor at the Law School of the University of Michigan. She is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and an associate member of the Institut de Droit International. She served as President of the German Society of International Law (DGIR) from 2019-2023 and as President of the European Society of International Law (2010-2012). Born in Berlin in 1964, Anne studied at the universities of Würzburg, Lausanne, Freiburg, and Harvard, and held the chair of public international law at the university of Basel from 2001 to 2013. Her current research interests relate to public international law including its history, global animal law, global governance and global constitutionalism, and the status of humans in international law.

About the Topic
The exploitation, extermination, and suffering of animals, as well as moral and societal concern for animals, have gone global. But not so animal law, which has so far not sufficiently caught up with globalisation.

The talk surveys the scarce international treaties that protect animal species, and looks at the domestic laws that treat animals as things and offer modest welfare protections. It explains several Latin American court cases that recognise animal standing or rights and discusses the conceptual and practical benefits of fundamental animal rights as opposed to mere standards of protection. It sketches out some pathways for legal evolution within the EU and on the international plane, in combination with national law and enforcement. The path towards a truly global animal law needs to be sensitive to the highly diverse cultural context of human attitudes towards animals, but without allowing culture to be a blank cheque for animal abuse.

Optional reading: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5309196

About the Series
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.

The lecture will be held as a hybrid event, both on site at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Mittelweg 187, 20148 Hamburg, and as a video conference via Zoom.

Please register no later than Tuesday, 2 September 2025 using this LINK.

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