The Dawn of European Animal Rights Law

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Shaving Ockham

Visa Kurki’s ‘A Theory of Legal Personhood’ makes an impressive effort to put legal personhood on a more rigorous analytical footing without shying away from contentious issues such as the legal rights and personhood of foetuses, AIs, and animals. Focusing on its contribution to animal rights law, I show in this review that despite its numerous strengths, the book also has important shortcomings. A particular problem that stands out is that Kurki’s theory of legal personhood is built on an uncharitable reading of the accounts of two leading animal rights proponents. Unlike Kurki suggests, these accounts do not equate legal personhood with rights-holding, but with fundamental rights-holding. This position—which I call the Fundamental Rights View—can explain all the beliefs that Kurki’s theory aims to explain, but without being nearly as complex as it. Moreover, while Kurki’s theory helpfully raises awareness of the varied nature of legal personhood, I suggest that a pluralist understanding of legal personhood might provide a simpler explanation for that diversity

Natural Rights, Constituent Power, and the Stain of Constitutionalism

Publication status: PublishedThe power to make constitutions (the so‐called constituent power) is predominantly understood today as a legally unlimited power belonging to the people. This understanding sits uncomfortably with constitutionalism: the idea that public powers are legally limited. Would such a power not leave an indelible blemish on constitutions that are otherwise committed to constitutionalism? This article shows that this problem, which I call the Stain of Constitutionalism, stems from a misapprehension of what constituent power was originally understood to be. Focusing closely on the writings of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Thomas Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet, I demonstrate that, far from adopting it, these founding fathers of constituent power theory rejected the notion of unlimited constituent power. Instead, they defended a natural rights approach according to which constituent power is legally limited by considerations such as freedom and equality.</jats:p

Grundrechte jenseits der «anthropologischen Schranke»? Die Primateninitiative im Lichte des wegweisenden Urteils des Verfassungsgerichts Basel-Stadt

Im Jahr 2016 lancierte die Organisation Sentience Politics im Kanton Basel-Stadt eine Initiative mit dem Ziel, ein Grundrecht auf Leben und körperliche und geistige Unversehrtheit für nichtmenschliche Primaten in die Verfassung aufzunehmen. Diese Initiative wurde zum Gegenstand eines Rechtsstreits, der 2019 zu einem wegweisenden Urteil des kantonalen Verfassungsgerichts führte. Das Verfassungsgericht anerkannte die Kompetenz der Kantone, «den Kreis der Rechteinhaber über die anthropologische Schranke hinaus auszudehnen». Dieses Urteil wurde kürzlich vom Bundesgericht bestätigt. Die Autoren, die diesen Fall juristisch begleitet haben, geben in diesem Beitrag aus erster Hand Einblicke in die juristischen Strategien hinter der Initiative und besprechen die wichtigsten rechtlichen Entwicklungen im Rechtsstreit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Urteils des Verfassungsgerichts Basel-Stadt