Publications by Jessica Eisen
The primary frameworks through which scholars have conceptualized legal protections for animals-a... more The primary frameworks through which scholars have conceptualized legal protections for animals-animal "rights" and animal "welfare"-do not account for socio-legal transformation or democratic dialogue as central dynamics of animal law. The animal "rights" approach focuses on the need for limits or boundaries preventing animal use, while the animal "welfare" approach advocates balancing harm to animals against human benefits from animal use. Both approaches rely on abstract accounts of the characteristics animals are thought to share with humans and the legal protections they are owed as a result of those traits. Neither offers sustained attention to the dynamics of legal change in democratic states, including the importance of public access to the facts of animal lives, opportunities for affective storytelling, and multi-faceted public deliberation.
While many constitutions refer to animals as resources or symbols, in recent years a distinct for... more While many constitutions refer to animals as resources or symbols, in recent years a distinct form of constitutional provision has emerged, treating the interests of individual animals as matters of intrinsic constitutional concern. The countries with such provisions are Switzerland (as. The enactment histories, texts, and interpretations in these diverse jurisdictions are highly local, but this article suggests that these provisions can and should be identified as a distinct and novel category of constitutional provision insofar as they each seek to directly protect animal interests. This article demonstrates that the emergence of these novel constitutional animal protection provisions represents a significant disconnect from prevailing theories of constitution-alism, which generally place the dignity and democratic self-assertion of human subjects at their center. This article explores this tension between constitutional animal protection and prevailing theories of constitutionalism and proposes a supplementary account of constitutional theory that embraces the state's obligation to attend to the interests of its most vulnerable members—even, and perhaps especially, where those members are incapable of constitutional self-assertion. This analysis offers a way of seeing constitutional animal protection as continuous with existing constitutional values, while also attending to the unique harms and politics of contemporary animal exploitation.
Journal of Law and Equality, 2008
Papers by Jessica Eisen
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Publications by Jessica Eisen
Papers by Jessica Eisen