Animal Rights Law

The first to map the field of animal rights law, this user-friendly book explores the rights of animals in all key legal, ethical, and social dimensions.

Do animals have legal rights? This pioneering book tells readers everything they need to know about animal rights law.

Using straightforward examples from over 30 legal systems from both the civil and common law traditions, and based on a popular course taught by the authors at the University of Cambridge, the book takes the reader from the earliest anti-cruelty laws to modern animal welfare laws, to recent attempts to grant basic rights and legal personhood to animals. To help readers understand this legal evolution, it explains the ethics, legal theory, and social issues behind animal rights and connected topics such as property, standing, dignity, and human rights. The new edition, fully updated throughout, contains a new chapter on rights of nature and its relation to animal rights.

The book’s companion website (bloomsbury.pub/animal-rights-law) provides access to briefs on the latest developments in this fast-changing area, and gives readers the tools to investigate their own legal systems with a list of key references to the latest cases, legislation, and jurisdiction-specific bibliographic references.

Rich in exercises and study aids, this easy-to-use introduction is a prime resource for law students and for anyone else who wants to understand how animals can be protected by the law.