02 February 2026
Legislating Animal Rights
In late 2025, Satipo, a provincial municipality in Peru, recognized the legal rights of “stingless bees” to exist, maintain healthy populations, live in a healthy environment, and conserve and regenerate their habitat. What stands out is that the Peruvian ordinance gives shape to animal rights in a way that differs markedly from the traditional framing of animal rights as a social justice movement aimed at liberating all animals from human exploitation: it recognizes only one type of animal as a subject of rights. This illustrates that scholarship on animal rights may not be keeping pace with the reality of how animal rights are developing in practice. Continue reading >>
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03 July 2025
Rights for Non-Humans in EU Law
The recognition of animals and nature as potential rights holders has long been a controversial proposition within European legal discourse. However, we believe that the EU legal order is more hospitable to such recognition than one might expect. In a recent article, we argued for a rights-based reinterpretation of EU animal welfare and environmental protection laws. EU constitutional and secondary laws can be construed as entailing legal rights for non-human entities – even if these rights are not explicit the texts. We consider how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other EU legal acts may support a post-anthropocentric vision of Union law. Continue reading >>
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