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• The Justifyability and Current Status of Animal Legal Personhood

  Barbara Jakkel

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  72

  This paper is structured around three central questions: (1) Can animals be legal persons? (2) How is legal personhood related to the recognition of rights? (3) How do these two questions relate to effective animal protection? The paper first outlines the positions of the main proponents of well-known theories of rights – namely, the will-based and interest-based theories – to examine more closely whether legal personhood for animals can be justified. Turning to the second question, while the recognition of legal personhood is traditionally considered a prerequisite for the recognition of rights, this text questions that assumption at one point. Various models of animal protection are then presented, each addressing the purpose of granting rights to animals. Although the paper does not avoid the difficulties that hinder the recognition of legal personhood and substantive rights, it concludes that the effectiveness of animal protection is closely linked to the recognition of legal personhood.

• The Human Rights Approach to Climate Change and the Anthropocentrism of Human Rights

  26-42

  Barbara Jakkel

  Views:

  283

  We live in the ’Anthropocene’, whereby human destructive activity is having such a major impact on Planet Earth that it has become the main culprit in the global ecological crisis involving climate change, biodiversity loss and overall pollution. The scientific conception of the Anthropocene makes it inevitable that societies will reconsider the myriad economic and legal institutions used to regulate the relationship between humans and the environment. Since, a critic from the environmental ethics perspective states that the ecological crisis has been brought about by an anthropocentric view that emphasizes the exclusivity of human interests, subordinating non-human beings to these human interests. Such eco- or biocentric approaches, giving rights to nature or constitutionalizing biodiversity, seem rather exotic to a European lawyer, as in climate policy fights of this region we make efforts to increase the role of human rights. In this paper, I would like to point out that legal solutions that go beyond an anthropocentric perspective should not be understood as a kind of exoticism, but as a fundamental challenge to human rights-based climate protection that seeks to extend the language of rights beyond humans and calls for a non-human-centred protection of the environment. I will argue that, while this challenge must be taken seriously, there are good reasons to continue to use the language of human rights to express our climate change-related demands.