Prof. Fabien Marchadier (University of Poitiers): Animals as Tort Plaintiffs

About the Speaker
Fabien Marchadier is Professeur Agrégé at the University of Poitiers and Professeur Invité at Sciences Po Paris, University Panthéon-Sorbonne and University of Limoges. His main fields of research are Private International Law, European Human Rights Law and Animal Law. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Revue Semestrielle de Droit Animalier. In 2015, he co-edited a book on animal sentience. His publications cover a wide range of issues related to animal law (legal status, animals used for scientific purposes, animal welfare including in the context of livestock farming and companion animals within the family). He lectures on the legal status of animals at the University of Limoges. He was a former member of the French National Committee for Ethical Reflection on Animal Experimentation (CNREEA).

About the Topic
How can animals be protected against serious infringements of their bodily integrity? Is the status of thing, derived from Roman Law, convenient, especially considering the evolvement of animals’ legal status? In a growing number of countries, animals are no longer considered as things, whereas property law continues to apply to them. Overall, these countries aim to strengthen the legal protection of animals as sentient beings. Is the current state of civil liability suited to this objective? Is it possible to provide a high degree of protection to the physical integrity of a thing? To achieve better protection, should the law grant personhood to animals and, in consequence – since animals cannot act on their own behalf – determine who will bring legal action on their behalf? Could another approach be explored? Is there an alternative to the person/thing dichotomy? These are the main issues that will be addressed during the talk, based on a comparative analysis of French law and US law.

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 Wednesday, 4 November 2026 using this LINK.

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