English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Paper

Protection of animals through human rights: the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons232437

Sparks,  Tom
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Sparks, T. (2018). Protection of animals through human rights: the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. MPIL Research Paper Series, 2018-21. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3248910.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-E5E0-D
Abstract
This paper discusses the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law. Parts one and two of the essay take as their example the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and examine the major trends in the Court’s judgments and admissibility decisions that directly or indirectly concern the rights or welfare of animals. It is concluded that the Court is not indifferent to the welfare of animals, but that animal welfare is instrumentalised: it is understood not as a good in itself, but is instead valued for its implications for human welfare and rights. Part three of the essay then considers the obstacles that the anthropocentrism of the human rights idea and the instrumentalisation of animal concerns present to the use of human rights frameworks to further the development of global animal law, as well as the opportunities that exist in the meeting of these paradigms. It concludes that although the telos of human rights law is different from that of animal law, nevertheless there exist many overlapping concerns within which mutually beneficial interactions are possible.