“Nations Like Unto Yourselves”: An Inquiry into the Status of a General Principle of International Law on Animal Welfare
Summary This article proposes that there is a general principle of international law concerning the humane treatment of animals. Preoccupation with “animal rights” has been associated with Western cultural imperialism masquerading as a universal ethic. Animal welfare is thus an instructive case study of what Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope have identified as the key challenge for international law, that of “construct[ing] normative institutions while admitting and upholding the diversity of peoples in international society.” This article applies the framework of interactional international law set out in Brunnée and Toope’s recent book Legitimacy and Legality in International Law, while raising questions about the weight that their analysis accords to practice and their willingness to conclude that widely recognized principles to which states fail to adhere in practice lack legal force. The article also examines how laws prohibiting cruelty to animals have emerged precisely from an interactive cultural exchange between East and West, in particular, between England and India. It concludes that Brunnée and Toope’s framework, although it does not deal at any length with general principles of law (a source of international law in which practice plays a relatively minor role), is nevertheless a useful tool for understanding how a culturally contested principle fits into international law and ultimately supports the view that there is a general principle of international law concerning animal welfare.
Biodiversity, Species Protection, and Animal Welfare Under International Law
The chapter explores the influence of the concept of animal welfare on international biodiversity law. A close examination of the recent evolution of this branch of international law shows that animal welfare has an ambivalent place in biodiversity-related agreements. Indeed, while welfare is only a faint consideration in the development of international regimes dealing with biodiversity as a whole, the concept has become an essential element for agreements dealing with the conservation of specific endangered species. Despite its role in these agreements, the place of animal welfare in international biodiversity law highlights that this corpus of rules is currently insufficient to be an effective tool for the protection of wildlife welfare. The last section of this study suggests that the adoption of international rules aiming at ensuring the protection of wild animals’ welfare could serve the double purpose of strengthening the conservation purpose of biodiversity regimes while also filling the welfare gap of international biodiversity law.
Same-Sex Marriage in the United States
This Chapter gives a brief analysis of the status of same-sex marriage in the United States prior to the US Supreme Court decisions of 2013 and the status of litigation and political reforms triggered in part by these court decisions. It shows that marriage is a central institution in the country’s rationale of family law in ways that separate it from other western countries that have allowed same-sex marriage.