2024/04/15 by Visa A. J. Kurki, Visa Kurki · 7 citations
Social Sciences · #Biology #Commodity #Comparative law #Ecology #Economics #Environmental law and policy #Epistemology #Law #Law and economics #Market economy #Order (exchange) #Philosophy #Political science #Private law #Property (philosophy) #Sociology #Wildlife
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1468-2230.12886
published in Modern Law Review 87(6), 1452-1479 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2024/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The article develops an analytic account of nonhuman animals’ current legal status. Animals are often characterised as legal things and property, but this characterisation is both simplistic and, in some cases, incorrect. The article seeks to dispel a number of orthodoxies regarding the legal status of animals and offer a more nuanced and contextual account. The emphasis is on Western law, with a particular focus on European jurisdictions. The article approaches animal legal status in terms of two historical regimes: the Commodity Regime and the More‐than‐Commodity Regime. While treating animals as commodities has been the rule for millennia, the situation has recently become more multifaceted. For instance, the private law status of companion animals has shifted away from that of commodities. Furthermore, it is argued that some wild animals have stopped being legal things altogether as a result of EU wildlife law. The multifarious arguments are then synthesised in order to produce a bird's‐eye view of animals in the law.