The next session of the ANR RULNAT workshop
Ruling on nature. Animals and the Environment before the Court
A Tale of Two Battles. Arguing Legal Personhood for Animals in the USA and India
Daniela Berti, CNRS-CEH
In this paper, I focus on how the issue of considering animals as legal persons has been argued in court by the Non-Human Rights Project led by
Steven Wise in the United States and how this project was recently adopted and reinterpreted by an animal rights organization in India, in preparation for their own court battle. I will also show how, in turn, Indian cases raising the question of the legal personhood of animals and rivers have been used by Wise as precedents to argue his case in court. The comparison will thus raise the question of how legal ideas and strategies regarding so-called « rights of nature » travel around the world, giving rise to reciprocal appropriations and possible idealizations.
The making of a Species in the Judicial Context : the Case of “Chucho” the Bear (Colombia)
Carolina Angel-Botero, University of Los Andes, Bogota
In this presentation I draw a parallel between specimen collection techniques in biological sciences, with the ways judges address animals in the
courtroom. I focus on the case of “Chucho” the bear, a case handled by the Constitutional Court of Colombia, to reflect on the conditions in which this animal is allowed to “speak”. For this analysis I use the Court’s decision, my observations during the public hearing convened in 2019 in which different experts took part, as well as the media coverage that was given to the case. In my discussion, I raise the importance of paying attention to the ways in which subjects are produced, since the way it is done nowadays takes us away from a claim towards a multispecies ethic.
will be held on Thursday 2 December, 10am–1pm
on Campus Condorcet, 14 cours des humanités, Aubervilliers
(Metro : line 12, get off at the station Front Populaire and take exit 2)
Bâtiment de recherche Nord, salle 0.010 (ground floor)
Click here for an interactive map of the campus - use the keywords ’Recherche Nord’.
Contacts : rulnat.anr@gmail.com (Daniela Berti, Vincent Chapaux, Vanessa Manceron, Sandrine Revet)
