Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person

Abstract

The field of animal law has been structured for the last twenty-five years around two key paradigms: (i) property v. persons and (ii) rights v. welfare. In this talk, Professor Fernández explains why both of these binaries are unhelpful traps for the field and why she thinks we need to move towards a more flexible legal status for nonhuman animals, which she terms quasi-property/quasi-personhood. In the quasi-hood approach to the legal status of nonhuman animals, nonhuman animals are more than mere property but they are also persons of a sort, legal persons, because they have legal rights, and only legal persons have legal rights.UVic Graduate Student Law & Society Research GroupFacultyUnreviewe