User:Marskell/Legal Status of Animals

The legal status of animals is generally as a form of property throughout the world. A human being’s legal duties toward animals are essentially derived from duties toward their owners. If not qualified under particular categories of law, such as endangered species acts, animals may be bought and sold, bequeathed, and sued for. Typically also, livestock may be raised and slaughtered for subsequent sale as food items, though this practice is usually circumscribed by humane slaughter laws. There is also a strong normative cultural (and sometimes religious) component to which animals, if any, may be bred for slaughter.

In most western jurisdictions, law has evolved to allow animals certain protections that override property concerns. A pet owner, for instance, is subject to animal cruelty laws as much with their own pet as with that of another.

Animals by type

Wild animals. Typically in western common law, no one owns wild animals in their natural habitat. Capture and possession form the basis of a property claim, though many jurisdictions circumscribe or prohibit the keeping of wild animals. Many wild animals are regularly hunted for food, sport or trade; this too generally comes with restrictions in the form of poaching laws. Wild animals which are dangerous or a nuisance, particularly in rural areas, are regularly killed in practice, though this may in some instances be illegal (based as much on weapons laws as much as animal rights per se).

Pets or companion animals.

Livestock

History

The status of animals as property is in keeping with much historical western thinking on the subject of animals generally. Aristotle’s “chain of being” and the Judeo-Christian notion of human “dominion” were particularly decisive in shaping western attitudes.

The ancillary status of animals relative to human beings reflected both a general philosophical attitude as well as the economic impact the loss of an animal might have on its owner. As early as the Code of Hammurabi the importance of livestock is apparent: the theft of cattle or sheep, an ass, a pig or a goat, required a thirty-fold fine if the animal belonged to the court and a ten-fold fine if it belonged to an ordinary free man; failing this, the thief could be put to death [1].

Medieval English kings, who were rather cash poor, used deer, boar and other animals as food, barter items, gifts and general symbols of prestige. Poaching was thus severely punished; at least technically offenders could be tortured and disfigured though in practice they faced fines, imprisonment or exile [2]. For the poor of the town the relatively inexpensive pig was a main food and the animal was common enough to become a nuisance animal: stray pigs could be killed and their owner charged for the return of the dead animal [3]. Peasants, meanwhile, would often sleep with their animals to avoid their wandering away or being stolen.

Horse theft has at times been punishable by death in the United States [4].

In the nineteenth century, organizations dedicated to the protection of animals began to form—particularly in Britain—and laws were widely passed to protect animals from cruelty. The underpinnings of this movement was animal welfare [5]: that is, the animals themselves were not granted legal status but rather human beings were expected to abide by a minimum level of consideration and humaneness. Not until the twentieth century would the notion that animals should have rights exclusive of their relationship to people begin to emerge.

http://www.imom.org/voices/laws.htm

Animals and contemporary Law

Animal cruelty laws

In the United States animal cruelty laws are dealt with at the state level and their is some variance [6]. The essential point for most of these laws is to render malicious injury or killing illegal, and often as a felony. Generally, neglect is also included and reasonable expectation to provide veterinary and other care is mandatory.

In a few jurisdictions, notably, Massachusetts and New York, agents of humane societies and associations may be appointed as special officers to enforce statutes outlawing animal cruelty, see the Massachusetts statute and the New York statute. Brute Force: Animal Police and the Challenge of Cruelty by Arnold Arluke is an ethnographic study of these special humane law enforcement officers.

Other status

Guardianship

Recent American court cases have sought to define pet owners as "guardians" and to provide them restitution in the case of injury, loss, or death of a pet beyond the animal’s property value [7].