In this section, you can find short summaries of recent cases and legislation that have appeared after January 2023, when the textbook went to print. The section only contains briefs of the most important such materials, and only where they are relevant for animal rights law. If you wish to recommend cases or legislation to add to this page, please email Sean Butler or Raffael Fasel.

Please note that not all references are available for free. You can enquire with your university or city library whether they provide access to these sources.

• Animal Welfare Board of India v Union of India (2023)

Animal Welfare Board of India et al v Union of India et al [2023] Supreme Court of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No 23 of 2016

On 18 May 2023, the Indian Supreme Court issued its decision in Animal Welfare Board of India v Union of India, a case that allowed the Court to revisit its Animal Welfare Board of India v Nagaraja division bench ruling from 2014 and to clarify its stance on whether animals have thick rights under the Indian Constitution.

As we discussed in Chapter 6, Nagaraja concerned the legal status of Jallikattu races – events involving the chasing and pulling down of bulls that can result in harm or even death to the bulls. To declare these races illegal, the Supreme Court not only found a breach of the national Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960, but it also invoked the right to life and to personal liberty protected under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, holding that ‘every species has a right to life and security’ (para 62).

In response to the Nagaraja decision, the states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Karnataka passed legislation to re-legalise activities such as Jallikattu and similar bullock cart races, albeit now governed by stricter regulations. Challenges to this legislation formed the basis of Animal Welfare Board of India v Union of India, which made its way to the Supreme Court. The question the Supreme Court faced was: is this legislation compatible with Nagaraja, or does it violate the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and animals’ constitutional protections?

The five judge-bench deciding the case was unconvinced by the petitioners’ argument that, despite the stricter regulations, the Jallikattu and other races still violated the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960. Finding that the new legislation brought about a ‘substantial change’ (para 30) in the manner such races are conducted, the Court held that they no longer violate that Act. In contrast to Nagaraja, where the division bench argued that animals’ protection against cruelty overrides any claims to tradition or culture, the five judge-bench Court was open to considering especially Jallikattu races as a cultural tradition deserving of protection.

Most importantly for our purposes, the Court also addressed the question of whether animals have a right to life and personal liberty under the Constitution. To answer this question, the Court distinguished between statutory rights and fundamental (ie constitutional) rights – a distinction that echoes that of thin and thick rights, which we introduced in Chapter 4. Animals, the Court found, possess statutory rights in virtue of benefitting from laws such as the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act that impose restrictions on what humans are allowed to do to them. However, the Court emphasised, there is no precedent for saying that animals have fundamental rights.

In contrast to how some commentators have interpreted Nagaraja, the Court held that that decision ‘does not lay down that animals have Fundamental Rights’ (para 24). Rather, the Court clarified, Nagaraja’s pronouncements about animals’ rights under the Constitution had merely been made ‘at the advisory level’ or ‘framed as a judicial suggestion’ (para 24). Repeating an argument that we have seen in other courts faced with animal rights cases, the Court held that it is a matter for the legislator, and not the courts, to decide whether animal rights should be promoted from statutory rights to fundamental, constitutional rights.

Still, that deference to the legislator did not prevent the Court from adding sceptical observations regarding writs of habeas corpus in respect of animals, as well as regarding legal personhood. It noted that ‘[w]e have our doubt as to whether detaining a stray bull from the street against its wish could give rise to the constitutional writ of habeas corpus or not’ (para 14), and that ‘[w]e do not think Article 14 of the Constitution [which enshrines equality before the law] can also be invoked by any animal as a person’ (para 14).

Animal Welfare Board of India v Union of India did not, strictly speaking, overturn Nagaraja. However, the Court took a decidedly more conservative approach that may prove an obstacle to future constitutional rights litigation for animals in India. 

• Panama: Law Granting Rights to Turtles, Law No.371 - Wednesday 1st March 2023 (April 2024)

Note: When we wrote Chapter 7 of the textbook in 2022, we did not need a section on animal rights laws - only on proposals for them - because no country had passed any such laws. In the next edition, we will need to have a new Section I, "Domestic Animal Rights Laws", because in March 2023 the National Assembly of Panama passed what may be the first animal rights law anywhere in the world, granting rights to turtles in the wild.

Establishing the conservation and protection of sea turtles and their habitats in the Republic of Panama - https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/pan218821.pdf 

Like the Swiss Primate Rights Initiative (page 149 in the textbook), the Panama Law granting rights to turtles (2023) (henceforth Panama law) focusses on a specific group of animals, in this case sea turtles living in the waters around Panama. Unlike the Swiss Initiative, the Panama law is a piece of ordinary legislation, not a constitutional amendment, and therefore goes into considerably more detail. 

The Panama law is framed as explicitly giving rights to turtles. Article 29, entitled “Protección de los derechos de las tortugas y sus hábitats” (“Protection of rights of turtles and their habitats”) says:

Artículo 29. Protección de los derechos de las tortugas y sus hábitats. El Estado garantizará que las personas naturales y jurídicas protejan los derechos de las tortugas marinas y sus hábitats, tales como vivir y tener paso libre en un ambiente sano, libre de contaminación y otros impactos antropocéntricos que causan daño físico y a la salud, como el cambio climático, la contaminación, la captura incidental, el desarrollo costero y turismo no regulado, entre otros.

Article 29. Protection of rights of turtles and their habitats. The State shall ensure that individuals and bodies corporate protect the rights of sea turtles and their habitats, such as living and having free passage in a healthy environment, free of contamination and other anthropocentric impacts causing physical damage to their health, such as, inter alia, climate change, pollution, bycatch, coastal development, and unregulated tourism. [translation by Michael Fulton, CIOL]

Article 29 grants several rights to sea turtles: the right to life (“living”), the right to free movement (“having free passage”), and the right to move freely in a healthy environment (“living… in a healthy environment”). All these are consistent with rights that are often proposed for animals living in the wild. Mirroring the rights recognised in this provision, Article 31 prohibits various activities that would harm sea turtles, such as capture, harassment, and ill-treatment.

However, despite the striking rights language adopted in Article 29, the law also contains provisions of the sort that are typical of traditional laws protecting endangered species. The Ministry of the Environment is required to establish protected areas, special management zones, and reserve areas, as required for conservation and/or rehabilitation. This raises the question whether the Panama law provides thick rights for turtles, or simply thin rights.

As we explain earlier in the book (at page 88), a thick right is made up of a complex set of Hohfeldian principles. It protects an individual animal’s fundamental interests, with a high threshold for justifying limitations, it is directly enforceable by the individual (or their representative), and has a dynamic character that could enhance protection over time.

We can evaluate whether the Panama law meets these criteria:

• it is complex in the sense of being a Hohfeldian molecule: it contains duties imposed on people, claim rights of the animals, and procedural tools which may well amount to powers in the Hohfeldian sense;
• it does protect fundamental interests: the right to life, to free movement, and to a healthy environment;
• it is unclear how high itsthreshold for justifying limitations is. On the one hand, it seems to set a relatively low threshold. For example, Article 7 permits fishing and other aquatic activities even in protected areas. On the other hand, these activities will be subject to codes of conduct, and the use of turtle-excluding devices). Hence, how far these limitations and exceptions go depends on the codes themselves;
• there is no provision for direct enforcement by the individual animal or their representative: the Panama Ministry of the Environment is the designated body for protecting sea turtles and enforcing the law;
• while there is no explicit mechanism in the law for dynamic enhancement of protection over time, the courts may potentially interpret the law in more protective ways in the future.

As this suggests, the Panama law directly satisfies two of the criteria ((1) and (2)) of thick rights, and – depending on how it is applied – it has the potential to also meet two additional criteria ((3)(5)). The only criterion it does not meet is (4).

To tilt the balance, one might consider an additional criterion: what was the intention of the legislature? It is not clear, but it seems that it was aware that the law was going beyond protection, and granting rights to turtles.

Based on this analysis, then, has Panama granted rights to sea turtles? The legislation does not provide for direct enforcement and is ambiguous about how easy it is to limit the rights and carve out exceptions to them. The Panama law shows that it is helpful to view the criteria of thick rights as being on a spectrum: the more a law meets the criteria, the more it is a thick right. By the same token, just because a particular right does not meet one criterion, that does not automatically turn it into a thin right. It is simply less obviously a thick right as some potential (future) other rights.

Based on this, we can say that, while the Panama law may not be a perfect example of a thick animal right, it is still thicker than the rights that legislation and constitutions in other countries grant to animals and so may be the first national law granting (thick) rights to animals.